A short history of the Italian Waldenses who have inhabited the valleys of the Cottian Alps from ancient times to the present

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?*7 PRINCETON, N. J. <f>

Purchased by the
Mrs. Robert Lenox Kennedy Church History Fund.

BX 4875 .B62 1897
Bompiani, Sofia, b. 1835.
A short history of the
Italian Waldenses who have

A SHORT HISTORY

OF

THE ITALIAN WALDENSES

MAP OF THE WALDENSIAN VALLEYS ; THE CHURCHES
AND STATIONS OF THE MISSION.

A SHORT HISTORY

OF

The Italian Waldenses

WHO HAVE INHABITED THE VALLEYS
OF THE COTTIAN ALPS

jftom Ancient Eimm to tlje Present

SOPHIA V. BOMPIANI

AUTHOR OF "ITALIAN EXPLORERS IN AFRICA"

NEW YORK
A. S. BARNES AND COMPANY

LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON
l897

Copyright, 1S97,
By A. S. Barnes & Co.

All rights reserved.

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

PREFACE.

The present generation of Italian Waldenses,
with that firmness characteristic of the race,
believe that their forefathers lived in the Val-
leys of the Cottian Alps from " time imme-
morial." Without documents to prove their
existence as evangelical Christians in these
Valleys previous to the time of Peter Waldo
in the twelfth century, they yet obstinately
reject the theory that he was their founder.
They pay him no especial honor as do Lu-
therans to Luther ; Wesleyans to Wesley ;
Calvinists to Calvin ; Mahometans to Ma-
homet; Buddhists to Buddha.

Unable to prove these traditions of their
more ancient origin, they listen with respect,
but without assent, to the documented histories
of their race, dating from Peter Waldo, written
by some of their most learned professors. In

Preface

truth there is little to say against these conclu-
sions except the traditions and convictions of
an ancient race fixed for centuries in the same
locality, and the rare traces of them found in
the writings of their enemies. These few argu-
ments found in the writings of other historians
of the Waldenses I have gathered for this
modest little work.

S. B.

Rome, Italy, 1897.

CONTENTS.

Chapter Page

I. The Israel of the Alps i

II. The Diocese of Bishop Claudio of Turin

in the Ninth Century 12

III. Who were the Albigenses ? 20

IV. Antiquity of the Waldenses before

Peter Waldo 25

V. The "Noble Lesson" 32

VI. Calumnies and Oppressions of the In-
quisitors 40

VII. Geographical Position and Colonies . 48

VIII. The Ministers, or " Barbes " 55

IX. Persecution begun in the year 1476 . . 63

X. Persecution of A.D. 1561 70

XL Persecution of Easter, 1655 78

XII. The Glorious Return in 1689 ... 86

XIII. Extirpation of the Colony in Calabria 94

XIV. Language changed after the Pest in

^30 102

XV. Heroes m

Contents

Chapter Page

XVI. Martyrs 120

XVII. Women . „ 130

XVIII. Friends —General Beckwith 140

XIX. Emancipation in 1848 148

XX. A.D. 1889. — Bi-Centenary of "Glorious

Return" 156

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Map of the Waldensian Valleys ; the Churches

and Stations of the Mission . . . Frontispiece
Torre Pellice, the Capital of the Valleys To face p. 5
Entrance to Torre Pellice, Roman Catholic

Church 15

Waldensian Church at San Giovanni .... 23

Cascade of the Pis at Massello 57

School of the Barbes at PrA del Torno, An-

grogna . 57

Waldensian Church at Angrogna 62

From Angrogna to PrA del Torno 67

Angrogna 75

Route of Return of Waldensian People from

Switzerland through Savoy 87

Portrait of Catinat 89

Portrait of Henri Arnaud 91

Portrait of Victor Amedeus, Duke of Savoy

and Prince of Piedmont 93

From an engraving by De l'Amerssini, published in Paris, 1684.

Prangins, Lake Leman, from a print . . . . 115

Siege of Balsiglia, from an old print .... 157

Waldensian Residence and Museum 159

Badges 159

A SHORT HISTORY

OF THE

ITALIAN WALDENSES

CHAPTER I

THE ISRAEL OF THE ALPS

In the valleys of the Cottian Alps, between
Mount Cenis and Mount Viso, a Bible-loving
people have lived from "time immemorial."
They have been persecuted and exiled by the
Bible-hating power which has its seat in
Rome; but after exile they returned to their
green valleys, and after persecution they were
not destroyed. Now, like a healthy vine
which has its roots in those valleys, the
branches of this primitive Church spread out
over all the Italian peninsula.

It has churches in all the great cities, —
in Turin, Milan, Venice, Florence, Genoa,
Rome, Naples, Palermo, Messina, and even
at Vittoria, a small town at the extremity of
Sicily. It has forty-four pastors and fifty-

2 The Italian Waldenses

four hundred members in the mission churches
of the peninsula, and twenty-two pastors and
thirteen thousand five hundred members in
the valleys. This hath God wrought for the
Waldenses. They " kept the faith so pure of
old," spite of torture, cold, destitution, and
loss of life on the Alpine mountains. They
were burned; they were cast into damp and
horrid dungeons; they were smothered in
crowds in mountain caverns, — mothers and
babes, and old men and women together;
they were sent out into exile of a winter
night, unclothed and unfed, to climb the
snowy mountains ; they were hurled over the
rocks; their heads were used as footballs;
their houses and lands were taken from them,
and their little children were stolen to be
educated in the religion they abhorred. Yet
they refused to acknowledge the Roman pon-
tiff as the Vicar of Christ ; to bow down to
the wafer and believe it the body of Christ;
to confess to priests, or to give up the Bible.

Long before the German Reformation they
were an evangelical people, loving the Bible
above all things: making translations of it
into the vulgar tongue ; spreading it abroad in
Bohemia, in Germany, in France and in Italy.
They taught their children to memorize whole

The Israel of the Alps 3

chapters, so that whatever might befall the
written copies of the Bible, large portions of
it might be secure in the memories of their
youths and maidens. In secret meetings,
when they went by night barefooted, or with
shoes bound with rags, so that they might not
be heard in passing, it was their custom to
listen to the Gospels recited in turn by the
young, each one responsible for a certain
portion.

In spite of all their sorrows, often occa-
sioned by the weakness or bigotry of the
dukes and duchesses of Savoy, of whom they
were the subjects, the Waldenses never failed
in patriotic love and service to their country.

They are and always have been Italians, but
were often driven by the persecutions of the
middle ages into the French valleys, where
they found brethren of the same faith, and
learned their language. Beaten about like
the waves of the sea, backward and forward,
they had no rest. At one time thirteen out
of fifteen of their pastors died of the plague,
and they were obliged to send to Geneva for
French pastors, who introduced the French
language into the valleys. Their prince,
Victor Amedeus II., Duke of Savoy, urged to
do so by Louis XIV. of France, and by the

4 The Italian Waldenses

Pope, drove them with cruel persecution into
Switzerland.

Yet, when the tide changed, and they by an
heroic march had returned, — when he had
need of them to guard the Alps against the
inroads of that same Louis XIV. who had
persuaded him to drive them away, — they
gave him true and loyal service. Until the
year 1848 they were shut up in their moun-
tains without civil rights, — the very pariahs
and outcasts of Italy. A Waldensian could
not exercise a learned profession, or take a
regular course of study in the universities of
Italy, or worship according to his faith out-
side of the valleys. Yet they were ever ready
to greet their princes with respect and fealty
on the rare visits made them, and no Italians
have been more faithful to the established
government since their admission by the
statnto to equal civil and religious rights
with other citizens. Fervent prayers are sent
up every Sunday to the throne of grace from
every Waldensian pulpit in Italy for the wel-
fare of "King Humbert, Queen Margaret,
Victor Emanuel Ferdinand, Prince of Naples;
for the Senate, the Parliament, and all others
in authority."

No trace of bitterness or revenge is evident

The Israel of the Alps 5

against those who once persecuted their race
to the death. But yet they are faithful to the
oath taken two hundred years ago at Sibaud,
in the valleys, when, on their return from
three years and a half of exile, they swore to
drag their fellow-countrymen away by every
means in their power from the Babylonian
woe. This missionary spirit has possessed
them always.

Their pastors or barbes went, two by two,
dressed in long brown woollen gowns, over
all Italy to evangelize in the thirteenth, four-
teenth, and fifteenth centuries. They had
churches and adherents in every town and
city, and were always the guests of their own
people.

With the dawn of liberty in 1848, they
awoke to new missionary life and vigor.
Churches and stations were established, and
a committee of five pastors was appointed to
collect money from Protestant Christians in
other countries. Seventy thousand dollars
are now needed annually for the wants of the
mission churches. All this must be collected
little by little, — a heavy task for those who
engage in the arduous work. The Waldenses
own their church buildings in the principal
cities. The beautiful edifice on the Via

6 The Italian Waldenses

Nazionale, in Rome, dedicated in the year
1885, is built on a foundation of gray granite
brought from the valleys.

The very rocks that were often bathed in
the blood of maidens and babes and old men,
— innocent or conscious martyrs to their
faith, — now rest on the soil of persecuting
Rome, and support that building which is the
ever-present witness to the goodness of God
to his people.

The origin of the Waldenses is lost in the
night of centuries. Their traditions assert
that they were driven from southern Italy, in
the time of the second and third centuries, to
the Alpine valleys, where they have ever since
lived. But they possess no written evidence
of this antiquity, and only believe it because
from time to time, from one generation to
another, their forefathers have constantly
asserted it. The profound conviction of an
entire race, with few exceptions, may well be
considered valuable, even in the absence of
written documents. Of these they have none
previous to the year 11 00, when the "Noble
Lesson " was written. But many arguments
in favor of their early Christian origin exist
which are found chiefly in the voluminous
writings in Latin left by their enemies.

The Israel of the Alps 7

There, amidst many calumnies and false
representations, are found, like pearls in the
mud, the confessions of faith of the martyrs
and the claims they made for the antiquity
and purity of their Church. An Inquisitor,
Reinerius Sacco, in the thirteenth century,
calling them the "Leonists," said: "There is
not one of the sects of ancient heretics more
pernicious to the Church than that of the
Leonists; first, because it has been of longer
continuance, for some say it has lasted from
the time of Pope Sylvester, others from the
time of the apostles; second, because it is
more diffused, for there is scarcely any land
in which this sect exists not ; and third, be-
cause the Leonists have a great semblance
of piety, inasmuch as they live justly before
men, and believe, together with all the doc-
trines contained in the creed, every point
respecting the Deity. But they blaspheme
the Roman Church and clergy."

Another writer of the thirteenth century
says that "the people who claimed to have
existed from the time of Pope Sylvester were
the Waldenses ; " while Claude Seyssel, Arch-
bishop of Turin in the sixteenth century,
says that " the Valdenses of Piedmont derived
from a person named Leo, who, in the time

8 The Italian Waldenses

of the Emperor Constantine, execrating the
avarice of Pope Sylvester and the immoderate
endowment of the Roman Church, seceded
from that communion, and drew after him all
those who entertained the same ideas. "

The Waldenses, or Valdenses, or Vaudois,
— men of the valleys, or dalesmen, — and the
Leonists are therefore the same.

Long before the time of Peter the Waldo
of Lyons, they bore the name of Leonists
from one of their teachers, named Leo. But
even he is not considered their founder, and
some of the present Waldenses believe their
origin is in a direct, unbroken line from the
primitive Christians.

This traditional Leo of the Waldenses is
no other than the famous Vigilantius Leo, or
Vigilantius, the Leonist of Lyons, in Aqui-
taine, upon the borders of the Pyrenees, and
a presbyter of the church of Barcelona in
Spain. This holy man charged Jerome with
too great a leaning to the opinions of Origen,
and wrote a treatise against the celibacy of
the clergy; the excessive veneration of the
martyrs and blind reverence of their relics;
the boasted sanctity of monasticism and pil-
grimages to Jerusalem or other sanctuaries.
This work of Vigilantius Leo has been lost,

The Israel of the Alps 9

but the violent answer made to it by Jerome
still exists. "I have seen," says Jerome,
"that monster called Vigilantius. I tried by
quoting passages of Scripture to enchain that
infuriated one ; but he is gone ; he has escaped
to that region where King Cottius reigned, be-
tween the Alps and the waves of the Adriatic.
From thence he has cried out against me, and,
ah, wickedness ! there he has found bishops
who share his crime."

This region, where King Cottius reigned,
once a part of Cisalpine Gaul, is the precise
country of the Waldenses. Here Leo, or
Vigilantius, retired for safety from persecu-
tion, among a people already established there
of his own way of thinking, who received him
as a brother, and who thenceforth for several
centuries were sometimes called by his name.
Here, shut up in the Alpine valleys, they
handed down through the generations the doc-
trines and practices of the primitive Church,
while the inhabitants of the plains of Italy
were daily sinking more and more into the
apostasy foretold by the Apostles.

The hero of the glorious return from exile
in 1689, Colonel Henri Arnaud, who led nine
hundred Waldenses over the Alps to their
homes, writes : " The Vaudois are descendants

io The Italian Waldenses

of those refugees from southern Italy, who,
after St. Paul had there preached the gospel,
were persecuted, and abandoned their beauti-
ful country ; fleeing like the woman mentioned
in the Apocalypse, to these wild mountains,
where they have to this day handed down the
gospel from father to son in the same purity
and simplicity as it was preached by St. Paul."

The confession which they presented, a.d.
1544, to the French king, Francis I., said:
"This is that confession which we have re-
ceived from our ancestors, even from hand to
hand, according as their predecessors in all
times and in every age have taught and
delivered."

And in the year 1559, in their supplica-
tion to Emanuel Philibert of Savoy, they say:
" Let your highness consider that this religion
in which we live is not merely our religion of
the present day, but it is the religion of our
fathers and of our grandfathers, yea, of our
forefathers and of our predecessors still more
remote. It is the religion of the saints and
of the martyrs, of the confessors and of the
Apostles." When addressing the German
Reformers of the sixteenth century, they say :
" Our ancestors have often recounted to us
that we have existed from the time of the

The Israel of the Alps 1 1

Apostles." They agreed with the Reformers
in all points of doctrine, but refused to be
called a Reformed Church, as they said they
had never swerved from the true Christian
faith, and needed no reformation.

CHAPTER II

THE DIOCESE OF BISHOP CLAUDIO OF TURIN
IN THE NINTH CENTURY

The Waldenses are known to have existed
in the ninth century in the valleys of the
Cottian Alps. The evidence of this must
have been clear to their enemy, Rorenco,
prior of St. Rock, at Turin, who in 1630
s studied the history of the "Heresies of the
' Valleys." He owns that "the Waldenses
were so ancient as to afford no certainty in
regard to the time of their origin, but that

I in the ninth century they were rather to be
deemed a race of fomenters and encouragers
of opinions which had preceded them."

Dungal, an ecclesiastic, who was the bitter
enemy of Claude, Bishop of Turin in the year
820, said that the people of Claude's diocese
were divided into two parts "concerning the
images and the holy pictures of the Lord's
passion; the Catholics saying that that picture
is good and useful, and almost as profitable as
Holy Scripture itself, and the heretics, on the

The Diocese of Bishop Claudio 13

contrary, saying that it is a seduction into
error, and no other than idolatry."

Dungal makes constant reference to Vigilan-
tius, and charges Claude and his Vallenses
with teaching the same doctrines as the
Leonist. Vigilantius, he said, was the neigh-
bor and spiritual ancestor of Claude, — both
being natives of Spain, — and the author of
"his madness."

But this was a holy madness, which they
both learned from Scripture and from the
primitive Church. The writings of Dungal
prove that after a lapse of four centuries the
memory and influence of Vigilantius remained
among the men of the valleys, and that,
although the faithful preaching of Claude
encouraged and strengthened their faith, they
did not owe to him its origin.

Claude was the court chaplain of Louis the
Meek, the son of Charlemagne. He was
appointed by that Emperor, Bishop of Turin,
which city he found " full of images." " When,
sorely against my will," he says, "I under-
took, at the command of Louis the Pious,
the burden of a Bishoprick, I found all the
churches of Turin stuffed full of vile and
accursed images. " He alone began to destroy
what all were "sottishly worshipping," and

14 The Italian Waldenses

had the Lord not helped him they would
have swallowed him up quick. He became a
reproach to some of his neighbors, but God,
the Father of Mercies, comforted him in
all his afflictions, so that he might comfort
others who "were weighed down with sorrow. "
These "others" were the partakers of his
affliction, kindred souls, objects like himself
of scorn and hate; the successors of those
whom Jerome vituperated, inhabiting the
mountain valleys in the diocese of Turin.

Turin was "wholly given to idolatry," but
the Valdenses held firmly with their Bishop
the doctrines of the Gospel. They, with him,
rejected image worship, and saint worship,
and bone and ash worship, and cross worship,
and pilgrimages to Rome, and papal suprem-
acy. "All these things," said Claude, "are
mighty ridiculous." He continued to com-
bat error and keep the Church committed
to him free from idolatrous rites and anti-
Christian dogmas, teaching no new doctrine,
but keeping to the pure truth, and opposing
to the uttermost all superstitions. " I repress
sects," he said, — his definition of a sect being
any departure from the truth of Scripture.
His sermons are models of simplicity and
truth. "Why do you prostrate yourselves

The Diocese of Bishop Claudio 15

before images? Bow not down to them, for
God made you erect, with the face towards
heaven and towards Him. Look up there!
Seek God above and lift up your heart to
Him."

Claude wrote commentaries on the Epistles,
on Genesis, Leviticus and Matthew. Some
of the manuscripts still exist; one in the
Abbey of Fleury, near Orleans; one in the
library of St. Remi at Rheims, and one in
England. The only one ever printed was the
Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians,
nearly all the copies of which were destroyed
by his enemies. But fragments of his works
have been preserved in the manuscripts of his
opponent and former friend, Jonas of Orleans,
who thus unconsciously rendered him a service.

Jonas, while himself believing in the adora-
tion of the cross, quotes these words of Claude
against it, — " Nothing pleases them in our
Lord but what delighted even the impious, the
opprobrium of His passion, and the ignominy
of His death. Why not, then, adore the cradle,
the manger, the ship, the crown of thorns, the
spike, the lance ? God commands one thing,
those men another. God commands to bear
the cross, not to adore it. To serve God in
this manner is to forsake Him."

1 6 The Italian Waldenses

The opposition of Claude and a part of his
diocese to the worship of images was sus-
tained, in the year 794, by the Council of
Frankfort, when Charlemagne was present,
and in 826 by the Council of Paris. But his
enemies in Turin persecuted and reviled him.
Dungal calls him "a mad blasphemer" and
"a hissing serpent," for his "error" in oppos-
ing all kinds of image-worship. And Claude
used no less vigorous language, for, being
called to appear before a synod of bishops to
answer for his conduct in banishing images
from the churches, he refused on the ground
that they were congregatio asinorum.

The bishop who girded the sword over his
white surplice to fight the Saracen in that
period of Moslem invasion might be expected
to give such a sturdy answer as this.

Claude sealed his faith by martyrdom in
the year 839, after having for many years
courageously battled with his enemies. From
that date the Valdenses were without a bishop,
and confined as a race to the narrow limits of
the valleys. The church of Jesus Christ and
the Apostles shrank away from the errors of the
Roman Church, and retired into the "wil-
derness," where it remained imprisoned for
centuries. God sealed it up there for the day

The Diocese of Bishop Claudio 17

of tribulation, when He tried it like as gold
is tried in the refiner's fire. In all the plains
of Lombardy the voice of truth was silenced.
There, from the fourth to the ninth century,
many had professed the early Christian faith
in its purity. The Waldensian Church is be-
lieved to have extended its influence from
Turin to Milan, as in all its existence it has
been possessed by the missionary spirit.

Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who died in
the year 397, was called "the Rock of the
Church," on account of his reverence for the
Scriptures and opposition to all idolatrous
practices. Another bishop of Milan, in the
ninth century, " rejoiced in the goodness of
God, which had raised up Claude, a true
Christian champion."

The ancient emblem of the Waldensian
church is a candlestick with the motto, —
Lux lucet in tenebris. A candlestick in the
oriental imagery of the Bible is a Church, and
this Church had power from God to prophesy
in sackcloth and ashes twelve hundred and
sixty days or symbolic years. " Lo, I am with
you always," Christ said to His Church before
leaving it, promising to keep it in life and
in purity until his return. No other Church
calling itself Christian can claim to have

1 8 The Italian Waldenses

had through all these centuries the spiritual
presence of our Lord. Like a good olive tree
it has borne abundant fruit of martyrs; like
a faithful prophet it has testified against the
idolatry and corruption of the Roman Church ;
like a light shining in a dark place, it has
spread the gospel abroad.

But two witnesses were to prophesy so long
in sorrow; two olive trees and two candle-
sticks were to stand before God on the earth,
and were not these the Waldenses and the
Albigenses? The true title of the Church
situated in the valleys of Piedmont is the
" Church of the united Vallenses and Albi-
genses. " Persecuted for their doctrines, sim-
ilar to those of the Waldenses, the Albigenses
of France fled at different times, from 1165 to
1405 a.d., to the Alps for refuge. Welcomed
by their friends, the Waldenses, who had been
in those mountains from "time immemorial,"
they lived together for several centuries in
amity, but keeping their separate names and
organizations. Then, tried by a series of hor-
rible persecutions, the two suffering churches
united like two drops of rain, and were hence-
forth known under one name. From this
time the name of the Albigenses is lost, but
the memory of their sufferings in the perse-

The Diocese of Bishop Claudio 19

cutions of the thirteenth century, made by
Pope Innocent III., survived in the hearts of
their descendants. War was made, and reg-
ular armies were enrolled against them, until,
slaughtered and routed, despoiled of property
and dignities, they fled in every direction.
The poor remnant which escaped from the
racks and fires of the Inquisitors and Crusaders
to the Alps preserved there, at least, its doc-
trines and its existence. The victims of these
persecutions were innumerable, as, according
to the Inquisitors, almost the whole popula-
tion of that part of France was " infected with
heresy." The "blessed Dominic," founder of
the order of preachers which exists to this
day, that "glorious servant of God," who, to-
gether with Simon de Montfort, directed this
crusade, was canonized for his services, and
admitted to the order of celestial nobility
by Pope Gregory IX. Miraculous fragrance
issued from the open sepulchre of this Beatus
Domenicus, and he was seen by a prior trans-
lated to heaven, which opened to receive
him.

CHAPTER III

WHO WERE THE ALBIGENSES ?

Who were these Albigenses, so numerous
in Provence, Aquitaine, Languedoc, Gascony,
and Dauphiny, a century before these terrible
crusades and also before the conversion of
Peter Waldo of Lyons? They called them-
selves Good Men or Apostolicals, and were
called by their enemies Paulicians, Cathari,
Petrobrusians, Henricians, Manicheans, Bul-
garians, Paterines, Publicans, and in 1176
Albigenses, from the town of Albi, where
they held a synod. They first were noticed
in the south of France about the commence-
ment of the eleventh century ; but long before
that a purer system of religion than that of
Rome prevailed among the people there.

"This whole district of Toulouse," says a
monk who wrote the history of this heretical
region, "has ever been notorious for the de-
testable prevalence of this heretical pravity.
Generation after generation, from father to

Who were the Albigenses ? 21

son, the venom of superstitious infidelity-
has been successively diffused. O Tou-
louse ! mother of heretics ! O tabernacle of
robbers ! "

Still the opposition to Rome took no com-
pact form, and showed itself chiefly in the
preaching of eminent individuals against the
worship of saints and images and relics, until,
at the beginning of the eleventh century,
appeared among this people, already prepared
to resist papal authority, a well-disciplined
handful of strangers from the East. These
Paulicians or Cathari were only four thou-
sand, but they formed a rallying point to resist
the tyranny of Rome, and the number of their
local proselytes, called Believers, was soon
innumerable.

The writings of the Albigenses have all
been destroyed by the Inquisitor, but their
confessions of faith, mixed with many falsities,
are preserved in the records of their enemies.
They were accused of Manicheism or worship-
ping two gods, one good and one evil; of
adoring Lucifer in the form of a black cat ; of
sorcery and turbulence; of propagating their
opinions by fire and sword; of abhorring ani-
mal food because it was produced by the evil
one ; of denying that Christ had a substantial

22 The Italian Waldenses

body, and thus doing away with the benefits
of his death. All these and many other hor-
rible accusations they denied, and suffered
persecution and martyrdom rather than admit
that they were true. That they held a Scrip-
tural faith similar to that of the Waldenses
and of the Protestant churches to-day is clear.
In the year 1017, at Orleans, three priests,
converts of the Paulicians, were examined for
eight hours, Queen Constance keeping guard
at the door of the cathedral, and afterwards
with a £tick putting out the eye of one of
them, — Stephen, who had been her confessor,
and who probably had reproved her sins. Bu*
" harder than any iron, " they refused to repent,
were degraded from holy orders, and with
other converts, fourteen in all, were led with-
out the walls of the city, where a great fire
was kindled, and were burned. These mar-
tyrs were said to be Manicheans, who main-
tained the existence of two gods : an evil god,
the creator of the material world, and a good
god, the creator of the spiritual world. But
they themselves said that they believed in
one God, whose law was written in their hearts
by the Holy Ghost : " We can see our King
reigning in heaven. By His own almighty
hand He will raise us up to an immortal tri-

Who were the Albigenses ? 23

umph, and will speedily bestow upon us joy
celestial."

The persistent charge of Manicheism, a
pagan religion of the East, was made against
the Albigenses because their theological ances-
tors, the Paulicians or Cathari, were them-
selves converts from Manicheism in Armenia.
About the middle of the seventh century, Con-
stantine, a native of Armenia, from reading
the four gospels and the fourteen epistles of
St. Paul, abandoned the errors of Manicheism,
renounced Manes, accepted the doctrine of
the Trinity and of Christ's divinity and in-
carnation, and led a life of exemplary godli-
ness. He assumed the name of Sylvanus and
founded a new Church, the members of which,
from admiration of St. Paul, called them-
selves Paulicians. They protested against the
tyranny of Rome, accepted the Bible as the
only rule of faith, and purified their creed
from all errors of Gnostic theology.

The emperors of the Eastern empire, who
were already slaughtering Manicheans, ex-
tended their persecutions to these evangelical
Christians. Constantine Sylvanus was ordered
to be stoned by his own disciples, all of whom
but one refused to stone him. Simeon, the
imperial officer who directed the persecution,

24 The Italian Waldenses

was himself converted, and after struggling
with his conscience three years at the Court
of Constantinople, returned, became the suc-
cessor of Sylvanus, and was burned, together
with hundreds of the Paulicians, on one huge
funeral pile. The few Paulicians who were
left continued to proselytize, and the Church
increased. But, worn with persecution, they
emigrated in the year 755 to the West, pass-
ing over Asia into Thrace, then into Bulgaria,
then into Italy, and at last into France, where
they arrived at the beginning of the eleventh
century. This persecuted church of the Paul-
icians, which was even more cruelly perse-
cuted when it developed in France into the
church of the Albigenses, is the other sym-
bolic candlestick. It is the Eastern church,
while the Waldensian is the Western. Now,
united after unimaginable sorrows, they preach
the gospel in Italy, and are a light shining in
darkness. Ltix lucet in tenebris.

CHAPTER IV

ANTIQUITY OF THE WALDENSES BEFORE
PETER WALDO

All Roman Catholic and some Protestant
historians call Peter Waldo of Lyons the
founder of the ancient Church of the Cottian
Alps. This theory sweeps away at a breath
not only the Apostolic but the Italian origin
of the Waldensian Church, making it no older
than the year 1160, when Peter Waldo began
his ministry in France. The firm conviction
of this people, that they have existed in the
Alpine valleys "from time immemorial," is
made to yield to the mere fact that Peter, the
rich merchant of Lyons, bore the name of
Waldo, and left it to his followers in the
north of France, in Germany, and in Bohemia.
In this latter country he died in 1197, after
evangelizing with zeal thirty-seven years.

The Waldenses, except a few recently,
have never, during these seven centuries,
recognized him as their head. Their oldest

26 The Italian Waldenses

writings, their confessions of faith, their cate-
chisms and poems, are not his, and make no
mention of him. He could not have founded
a Church which by the very confessions of its
enemies already existed, and which is well
known to have professed in the ninth century
evangelical doctrines opposed to those of the
Roman Church. He was called Valdo or
Valdis, Valdensius, Valdensis, or Valdius, the
name appearing in all these slightly varied
forms. He received this name from the dis-
trict where he was born, in Dauphiny in France,
the border country, which was also named
Valdis or Vaudra, or Valden, from its prox-
imity to the Waldensian valleys of Italy.
His family belonged there, and he himself
lived there in his youth before becoming a
merchant at Lyons. The Protestant inhab-
itants of Dauphiny were utterly exterminated
in later centuries by persecution, their faith
being the same as that of the Waldenses on
the other side of the Alps.

Nothing but the bias of early education
would explain the conduct of Peter Waldo at
a great crisis in his life. The sudden death
of one of his companions at a banquet made
the world and worldly things odious to him.
The good seed sown in his childhood and

Antiquity of the Waldenses 27

afterwards choked in a thorny soil sprang up
to sudden life, and caused him to devote the
remainder of his days to the service of Heaven
and his fellowmen. Had his early training
been in the papal Church, with his riches he
would have founded an abbey and entered it
as a monk ; but he began, instead, to denounce
the Roman Church as the Babylon of the
Apocalypse, and caused the Scriptures to be
translated into the vulgar tongue. He de-
voted himself altogether to missionary labors,
turned his house into a hospital, and distrib-
uted his goods to the poor, made proselytes
in Lyons, and wandered over many countries
teaching a pure Christian doctrine. These
were evidently his already adopted senti-
ments, learned in youth, and neglected during
his prosperous worldly life as a merchant.

The sudden religious impression received
by Luther under similar circumstances took a
different form. Luther was trained a papist
from childhood, and when, at twenty years of
age, having just finished the course of philos-
ophy at Erfurt, his companion was struck down
at his side by lightning during a thunder
storm, he abandoned the world by entering a
monastery, — not by preaching the gospel, for
he did not know it, — not by denouncing the

28 The Italian Waldenses

Roman Church, for he was devoted to it until
years after, when, through terrible mental
struggles, he was freed from its power.
Waldo knew at once, when the spirit touched
his heart, what Luther learned only by the
might of his intellect, and the throes of his
strong heart. Waldo, Le Vaudois, as the
French called him, was born to the knowl-
edge of the Scriptures. Imitating the early
Christians, he sold all that he had and gave
to the poor. "No one," he said, "can serve
both God and mammon." Beginning at Pen-
tecost, for three days every week he distributed
food to all who came for it. Crowds gathered
around him, and his friends exclaimed that
he was mad. But, mounting on a convenient
place, he said: "Citizens and friends, I am
not out of my mind, as you believe, but I am
avenging myself on my enemy, — this money,
which had reduced me to slavery, and made
me more obedient to it than to God; if any
one after this shall see me with money, then
let him say that I am mad ; and may you also
learn to place your hope in God, and not in
riches." But Peter did not change his con-
dition without pain. The separation from his
wife and two daughters, who did not accept
his religious ideas, wrung his heart, and he

Antiquity of the Waldenses 29

was distressed by the agony of his poor wife,
who, having heard that he had asked and
obtained alms from an old friend, rushed half
wild to the Archbishop, who cited them both
to appear before him. She ran to her hus-
band when he came, and between anger and
tears cried : " Oh, were it not better that I
should do penance for my sins by giving alms
to thee rather than to others ? " From that
day Peter took food only from his wife. The
Archbishop of Lyons soon began to persecute
Peter and the Poor Men, his disciples, who
like him had abandoned their worldly goods.
Waldo fled into Picardy, where, three cen-
turies later, John Calvin was born, and then
crossed the Alps with some of his followers
to find a welcome in Piedmont. Once more
he returned to escort other disciples to the
same place of shelter. The historian Botta
acknowledges that Peter found the Waldenses
there. "The Waldenses," he says, "are called
thus either because they inhabit the valleys,
or because Waldo, a celebrated heretic of the
twelfth century, left them his name after
having accepted their opinions."

Peter de Bruis and Henry, the Italian, who,
half a century before Waldo, had preached in
France, where one died in prison and the

30 The Italian Waldenses

other at the stake, had prepared the way for
his mission. The earnest preaching of the
Scriptures, the fervent love and faith show-
ing itself in works of charity of Waldo, soon
gained him eighty thousand adherents. He
sent men of all ranks, barefooted and without
money, into all the surrounding country, order-
ing them to preach in the public squares, and
to penetrate into the houses and churches.
They afterwards extended their missionary
labors into many other countries of Europe.
The persecution in the next century of the
Poor Men of Lyons, or Waldenses, and of the
Albigenses, who held the same doctrines,
filled all the prisons in France. ■ The Roman
Catholic bishops of Aix, Aries, and Avignon
said that between a.d. 1206 and a.d. 1228,
"so great a number of the Waldenses were
apprehended that it was not only impossible
to nourish them, but to provide lime and stone
to build prisons for them." In the year 1212
two religious orders, the Minor Friars or
Franciscans, and the Preaching Friars or
Dominicans were instituted to combat two
sects which "long since sprang up in Italy,"
says an abbot of the thirteenth century.
These two sects, or rather two branches of
the same sect, were the "Humiliated" and the

Antiquity of the Waldenses 31

"Perfect," or the Waldenses and the Poor
Men of Lyons. Reinerius the Inquisitor
calls the latter "modern heretics," to distin-
guish them from a " much more ancient sect,
the Leonists or Waldenses of Piedmont,"
their theological ancestors.

CHAPTER V

THE "NOBLE LESSON

The most ancient document of the Wal-
denses is "La Nobla Leyczon," a poem of
four hundred and seventy-nine verses written
in an idiom similar to that of the primitive
Romaunt languages in Alexandrine verse,
without rhyme. "The spirit of this poem,"
says a Waldensian historian, "is that of a
simple and retired age ; of a people constantly
nourished by pure, primitive doctrine; touch-
ing in its simplicity, and beautiful in its tol-
erance." Its subject is, according to verses
437 and 438, "The three laws that God has
given to the world, — the natural law, the law
of Moses, and the law of the Gospel." "O
brethren, hear a noble lesson. We ought
always to watch and pray, for we see that the
world is near to its end. We ought to strive
to do good works since we see that the world
approaches its end. Well have a thousand
and a hundred years been entirely completed

The c< Noble Lesson " 33

since it was written that we are in the last
times." This remarkable date, contained in
the sixth verse of the poem and written thus
in the original, —

" Ben ha mil e cent ancz compli entierament,"

fixes the date of its composition at the year
1 100 if counted from the Christian era, or at
from a.d. 1 149 to 1 1 80 if counted from the
prophecies of St. Peter and St. John. " Now
we are in the last time," says the poet, mean-
ing to give a solemn warning to prepare for
the end of the world. It was the general
impression of all Christendom that Satan,
having been bound through the millennium
of one thousand years, was loosed in the year
1000, and that after a short period of perse-
cution of the saints through his minister,
Antichrist, the world would be destroyed.
The Waldenses believed the Papacy to be the
predicted Antichrist, and the Papists saw the
loosing of Satan in the great increase of heresy
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The Waldenses and Albigenses saw a per-
secuting priesthood whose labors began at
Orleans almost immediately after the expir-
ation of the thousand years, and an apostate
Church, — the mystic Babylon, — seated on
3

34 The Italian Waldenses

the seven hills of Rome, and they did not hesi-
tate to call it the Man of Sin, or Antichrist.
Doubt has been thrown on the antiquity of
the Noble Lesson, some historians believing
that it was written in the year 1400, three
centuries later than the time indicated by its
dialect and character.

In the year 1658 Sir Samuel Morland, then
English Ambassador at the court of Piedmont,
sent four Waldensian manuscripts to the
library at Cambridge. One of these was a
copy of the Noble Lesson, and in it, between
the words mil or thousand and cent or one hun-
dred, appears the number IV in Roman char-
acters, making the date a.d. 1400. This copy
is of the fifteenth century, and contains besides
this error many others. The interpolation of
quatre or four lengthens the verse, a mistake
which the same copyist makes in verse 473,
while he shortens verse 30. The Noble
Lesson has been attributed to Peter Waldo,
or to some of his disciples. But, if this were
true, why did they not carry with them and
leave behind them similar writings in the
other countries where they went, or in the
south of France, from whence they came?
Why was not this ancient poem written in
one of the Romaunt dialects of France instead

The "Noble Lesson"

35

of in an idiom similar to the Italian, and pre-
cisely that spoken by the Waldenses ? Mr.
Raynouard, a student of those languages, says
that, judging only from its dialect, the Noble
Lesson must be the production of the eleventh
or twelfth century. The date noo, he says,
merits all faith, and the style of the work
and form of the verses favor its authenticity.
Although the poem refers to Roman Catholic
intolerance, it says nothing of the Inquisition,
and there is a youthful courage and ardor in
attacking abuses which yielded afterwards to
the accents of pain anoT grief. The horror
which the Noble Lesson expresses of the
doctrines of Mariolatry, and saint-worship, of
the supremacy of the Pope and the idolatry of
the mass, at a period when all the rest of the
world blindly obeyed the Papacy, is also a
proof that it is the production of mountaineer
Waldenses. They all, without distinction,
young men and girls and little children, as
well as the gray-bearded barbes or minis-
ters, made it a duty to spread the knowledge
of the gospel. The Vaudois missionary might
assume the garb and carry the lute of the
troubadour, singing portions of the " Nobla
Leyczon " instead of the Provencal love songs
of the period. " They have invented certain

36 The Italian Waldenses

verses," says a writer of the thirteenth cen-
tury, " in which they teach the practice of
virtue and the hatred of vice." They taught
that "God is the only object of worship; that
the Bible is the only rule of faith, and Christ
the only foundation of salvation." They
believed in one God, — Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit; that Christ is Life, Truth,
Peace, Righteousness, Shepherd, and Advo-
cate, Sacrifice, and Priest; that He died for
the salvation of all believers and rose again
for their justification. The troubadours or
minstrels went from castle to castle, singing
their songs, from the eleventh to the thir-
teenth centuries, a custom which is mentioned
in another Waldensian poem, called " La
Barca," known to be a production of the
thirteenth century and of later date than
the Noble Lesson. All rhymists agree that
poems like the Noble Lesson in accented lines
are older than those like "La Barca," written
in rhyme. Another proof of its antiquity is
the peculiar use of the word baron, which only
at the end of the thirteenth century became a
title of nobility. Previous to that time, and
especially from the ninth to the eleventh
century, it meant only some great or vener-
able person. In the old Provencal " Song of

The C£ Noble Lesson " 37

Roland " the twelve counsellors of Charle-
magne are called "the great barons with white
beards," and in the Noble Lesson the three
Magi at the cradle of the Saviour are called
"the three barons," and Abraham receives
the same title. Before the middle of the
thirteenth century a titled person would have
been called a duke or marquis, and not a
baron. Verse 331 of the poem says, "Then
sprang up a people newly converted. Chris-
tians they were named, for they believed in
Christ. But we find here what the Scripture
says, that the Jews and Saracens persecuted
them grievously." This expression, "Jews
and Saracens," applied in general to all per-
secutors, betrays an epoch when the Saracens
were yet objects of terror and the agents of
violence against all Christians. They were
conquered by Charles Martel in 732, but they
continued to ravage France and parts of the
French Alps near the Waldensian valleys
until the end of the twelfth century. Godfrey
of Bouillon took Jerusalem from the Saracens
in the year 1099. The Saracen, in the cur-
rent phraseology of the people of the West,
was the typical enemy and persecutor of
Christians of their time, as the Jew had been
of Christ himself. Another proof of the

38 The Italian Waldenses

antiquity of the Noble Lesson is the omis-
sion to mention the number of nails used in
crucifying the Saviour in the verse: "Four
wounds they gave him besides other blows.
After that they gave him a fifth to make the
completion, for one of the knights came and
opened his side, and forthwith there flowed
out blood and water mingled together." One
of the heresies attributed to the Albigenses
and Waldenses was their opinion that three
nails only were used, and that the left side of
our Lord was pierced by the spear. Triclav-
ianism was condemned by Pope Innocent III.,
who decided that four nails were used, and
that the Roman soldier pierced the right side
of Christ.

Saint Francis of Assisi, the founder of one
of the two Orders instituted by Innocent III.
against the Waldenses, or the "Humiliated,"
and the Poor Men of Lyons, or the " Perfect,"
was miraculously marked by the five wounds
of the Saviour, so that the four nails were
seen, — two on the inside of the hands, and
two on the outside of the feet, and the wound
on the right side. He contrived to mark
himself thus in order to disprove the old
triclavian or three-nail heresy of those whom
he was appointed to oppose. "The heretics,"

The " Noble Lesson " 39

says a writer of the period, " were confounded
by this practical argument of Francis."

Peter Waldo, in 1160, made a translation
of the Scriptures into the dialect of Southern
France, a proof that he was acquainted with
another version of the Bible, probably that of
the Italian Waldenses. The Paulicians or
Albigenses certainly possessed it, as they
were known to have suffered martyrdom for
its doctrines in Armenia before emigrating to
Europe. The Noble Lesson says : " For the
Scripture saith, and we ought to believe it,
that all men pass two ways, the good to glory,
and the wicked to torment. But if any shall
not believe this let him study the Scriptures
from the beginning to the end." A reference
is made, towards the end of the Waldensian
poem, to various celestial phenomena, which
occurred during the eleventh century, and
were believed to be signs of the approaching
end of the world. " Many signs and wonders
shall be from this time forward to the day
of judgment. May it please the Lord who
formed the world that we may be of the num-
ber of his elect to stand in his courts. Thanks
unto God. Amen."

CHAPTER VI

CALUMNIES AND OPPRESSIONS OF THE
INQUISITORS

The Waldenses for many centuries were a
persecuted and suffering race. They were
accused by their enemies and persecutors of
every crime and base practice; of worshipping
Lucifer in the form of a black cat ; of making
a cake of meal with the blood of an infant;
of deceiving their proselytes by diabolical
means, and inducing them to forsake their
holy mother, the Church and the priests,
"through whom they ought to come to sal-
vation " ; of being sorcerers "who dealt in the
impious vanity of magical incantations."

Through all the middle ages the Waldenses
of Piedmont were reported to be a race of
impious magicians, and the belief in their
sorcery was often of use to them in battles
with their enemies. It was believed that
through special favor of the devil they were
proof against musketry, and that their barbes

Oppressions of the Inquisitors 41

or ministers after a battle gathered up the
balls in their skirts by handfuls without hav-
ing received any harm. The children of these
terrific Vaudois were always born, it was said,
with hairy throats, with four rows of black
teeth, and with a single eye in the middle of
their foreheads. One of the Dukes of Savoy,
their prince, who visited his Waldensian sub-
jects after a persecution, asked to see these
monstrous children, but was convinced of the
calumny when rosy, pearly-toothed, well-
formed, two-eyed, lovely babies and children
were brought to him. The very name of
Vaudois or Vaulderie came to mean witch-
craft or friendship with the Evil One. " When
they wish to go to the said Vaulderie they
anoint themselves with an ointment which
the devil has given them. They then rub
with it also a very small rod of wood, and
with the palms of their hands place the
rod between their legs. Thus prepared and
equipped, they fly away wherever they please,
and the devil carries them to the place where
they hold their assembly. In that place they
find tables ready set out with wine and vict-
uals, and a devil in the shape of a goat with
the tail of an ape gives them a meeting."
Yet the Inquisitors who thus excited the

42 The Italian Waldenses

fancy and the hatred of the common people
against the Waldenses, in their communica-
tions regarding them to each other, were con-
strained by the divine power of truth to give
them another character. As in a mirror, the
lovely modesty and humility of the Walden-
sian character is reflected through the cloud of
calumny. " Heretics are the worst and most
profligate of mankind," says the Inquisitor.
" They are known by their manners and their
words. They are composed and modest ; they
admit no pride of dress, holding a just mean
between the expensive and the squalid. In
order that they may the better avoid lies, and
oaths, and trickery, they dislike entering into
trade, but by the labor of their hands they
live like ordinary workmen. Their very
teachers are mere artisans. Riches they seek
not to multiply, but are content with things
necessary. In meat and drink they are tem-
perate. They resort neither to taverns, nor
to dances, nor to any other vanities. From
anger they carefully restrain themselves.
They are always engaged either in working,
or in learning, or in teaching, and therefore
they spend but little time in prayer."

This paradoxical race, so wicked, and yet
so practised in all the Christian graces, made

Oppressions of the Inquisitors 43

converts among the noble and the great. A
wandering missionary, with a pack, like any
other merchant, would knock at the great
doors of a castle, and be admitted to the
presence of the beautiful castellana. When
he had shown his rings, and robes, and other
wares, he would say, " Lady, I have jewels far
more precious than these, which I will give
you if you will secure me against the priests."
The promise given, he said, " I possess a bril-
liant gem from God himself, for through it
man comes to the knowledge of God; and I
have another which casts out so ruddy a heat
that it forthwith kindles the love of God in
the heart of the owner." The "vagabond"
then rehearsed parts of the New Testament,
and often won the lovely lady of the castle
to the "religion," as it was called, even the
enemies calling it by that name, as if there
were no other religion. St. Bernard, the
enemy of the Albigenses, described them
thus: "If you ask them of their faith, noth-
ing can be more Christian, nothing more
irreprehensible than their conversation, and
what they say they confirm by their deeds.
They attack no one ; they circumvent no one ;
they defraud no one. Their faces are pale
with fasting; they eat not the bread of idle-

44 The Italian Waldenses

ness." Yet, "mark the fox," says Bernard, as
he proceeds to enumerate some of the popu-
lar calumnies, forgetting that this good fruit
could scarcely grow upon an evil tree. " They
submitted joyfully and triumphantly to mar-
tyrdom, rather than apostatize from what they
held to be the true faith of the gospel. "

But this contempt of death and suffering
was, in heretics, " inspired by Satan, and the
martyrdom was spurious." If by torture or
fear of worldly loss they were tempted to re-
tract and abjure their faith, as soon as "ever
they became masters of their own actions they
forthwith returned to wallowing in the filth
of their pristine error." These contradictory
accounts given of the Vaudois and of their
brothers, the Albigenses, by their enemies,
are noted also in the Nobla Leyczon, verses
357 and 372. "If any one will not curse,
nor swear, nor lie, nor commit injustice or
larceny, nor be dissolute, nor avenge himself
on his enemies, they say he is a Vaudois, and
merits to be punished." "These heretics,"
confessed King Louis XII., in speaking of
his Vaudois subjects of Val Louise, "are
better Christians than we." The Waldenses
of Piedmont were always distinguished, says
Leger, one of their own historians, by "a

Oppressions of the Inquisitors 45

simple and sincere conformity to the sacred
Word, by a holy life and conversation, by
persecution and the cross." Culture of the
fields and care of the flocks have always been
the principal occupations of the inhabitants
of the Cottian Alps. They are intelligent, but
the centuries of oppression which had weighed
upon them until a recent period made them
apathetic and concentrated in themselves.
Their type is far from being vulgar. They
are tall, or at least of more than medium
height; their black hair is fine and slightly
curly; their forehead is high and broad; the
eyebrows are heavy; the nose is fine, the chin
well-shaped. They are sober, patient, labori-
ous; slow to accept innovations, but faithful
to their promises. "Those who know the
idiom of the Waldenses as it is spoken in
these mountains," says Muston, one of their
historians, " can read the old poems that are
attributed to the race." A French historian,
M. Henri Martin, says : " It cannot be doubted
that there has been in the high Alps of Pied-
mont and Dauphiny a population which has
preserved, from ancient times, traditions and
manners very different from those which have
prevailed in the Roman Church." These may
be only tendencies, but in a rural and retired

46 The Italian Waldenses

population they are the result of hereditary
traditions and habits handed down from gen-
eration to generation. It might be supposed
that such a life of hardship and toil, such cen-
turies of sorrow and persecution would sink
the Waldensian to the level of his herd ; but,
on the contrary, he is gentle and courteous in
manner. On the highest mountain, or in the
loneliest vale, the traveller among them is
sure of safety and welcome. He speaks with
a tone of melancholy, as if the sorrows of his
ancestors had branded themselves on his soul.
Until the year 1848, when Charles Albert,
King of Sardinia, gave a charter of liberty to
them and to Italy, they had still their sor-
rows and privations. They were forbidden to
occupy or to purchase land beyond certain
boundaries, and a minister could not visit a
sick person beyond those limits unless accom-
panied by a Romish layman, and even then
could not stay more than twenty-four hours.
All correspondence with foreign ministers was
prohibited, and heavy duties were imposed on
all books, and especially on Bibles and re-
ligious works. Their physicians, surgeons,
apothecaries, lawyers, or notaries could not
exercise their professions beyond the limits of
the valleys. They were forbidden to inclose

Oppressions of the Inquisitors 47

their burial-grounds with walls. If the child
of a Waldensian was stolen, for the purpose of
proselytizing, by a Papist, the Waldensian
had no redress, even if the Papist on the
street called him a heretic and a dog. They
were compelled to abstain from work on
Popish festivals, and to uncover the head to
any idol carried along the streets. This was
nearly two centuries after the persecutions of
blood in Piedmont had ceased. These were
the tender mercies of that power which had
persecuted and calumniated their forefathers.
"It was a wind of death from the Vatican
which caused so many heads to fall; which
destroyed so many families; which desolated
so many hearts. Terrible hill," says Muston,
"which has preserved of Olympus only the
false gods, of Sinai only the thunders, and
of Calvary only the blood."

CHAPTER VII

GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION AND COLONIES

Where are these valleys which "the Eternal
God destined as the theatre of his wonders
and the asylum of his ark?" These Alpine
mountains were the scenes of heroism and
suffering, of cruelty and outrage that made
the name ring through the world. The rocky
but beloved land of the heroic men of the
valleys is on the Italian side of the giant
wall that separates Italy from France. It lies
about thirty miles southwest of Turin, across
the broad, level sea of verdure called the
Plain of Piedmont, and is a part of the chain
of mountains that rises abruptly from the
plain.

From Turin, on a clear day, these moun-
tains seem like etherial regions let down to
earth, vaporous against the blue sky, the
white of the snowy glaciers mingling with
the fleecy white clouds. The Waldensian
valleys lie between Mount Cenis and Mount
Viso, with the French province of Dauphiny

Geographical Position and Colonies 49

on the west, and the Plain of Piedmont on
the east. Persecution and confiscation have
reduced them to a space twenty-two miles
long and sixteen wide, an area of not over
three hundred square miles, the tour of which
could be made on foot in twenty hours. Mount
Viso, 12,000 feet high, with its snow-crested
cone, is like a pyramid rising out of a sea of
mountain ridges. It is " the Jungfrau of the
South; the powerful spirit that watches over
the valleys, for in the shade of its granite
sides the torch of the gospel found refuge for
its light." The valleys are three: the valley
of Luserna or Val-Pellice, including those of
Angrogna and Rora; the valley of Perosa
and the valley of San Martino. Luserna is
watered by the river Pellice, and San Martino
by the river Germanasca, — torrents rather
than rivers and not navigable, but fretting their
way through narrow denies or spreading out
where the green valley permits it to a wider
stream. Luserna is the largest and most de-
lightful of these valleys, and its long, low
hills, covered with vines and mulberries,
border a kind of gulf of the green Plain of
Piedmont, which enters there. From this
entrance of the valleys there is a lovely view
of the plain with the towns scattered over it,
4

5<d The Italian Waldenses

and of the rock of Cavour, a mountain rising
solitary like a natural fortress. In Luserna
grow all kinds of grain, grapes, chestnuts,
figs, and delicious fruits. It is a soft, Italian
climate: a land of brilliant-hued skies, of
bright fire-flies, of trailing vines and fragrant
flowers. But the aspect of the country changes
farther on in the valleys, and gives place to
the wild grandeur of the mountains. Perosa
is less fertile than Luserna, and the cold winds
of winter, the snow and ice, are sooner felt.
The rich vegetation and depths of green,
broken by sunlight, give place to forests of
chestnuts and walnuts that shade the ground
below, and form a thick canopy overhead.
San Martino is entirely shut in by the moun-
tains, — a long and narrow valley separated
from Luserna by an enormous chain of moun-
tains. The summits of these mountains form
a plain, very uneven and completely bare,
where, in the depressions of the rocks, accumu-
late the waters of the rains and melted snows
in innumerable pools, some of which are so
large as to merit the title of lakes, and to
give the region the name of the Plain of the
Thirteen Lakes. At the extremities of this
mountain plain are two peaks, — the Chalance
and the Cournaout, 8,229 and 8,604 feet high.

Geographical Position and Colonies 51

In the valley of San Martino the eagle
builds her nest on the high rocks, and the
chamois beguiles the hunter to the chase.
High mountain peaks, crowned with eternal
snows, rise on every side, and the lower slopes
of the hills are dotted with pretty towns and
farmhouses surrounded by orchards and vine-
yards. Here grow many lovely Alpine flowers,
one of which, the blue Campanula Elatinus,
is celebrated for its delicate beauty.

The river of San Martino, the Germanasca,
that spreads out broad and calm above, is nar-
rowed at its outlet to a few yards in width,
and struggles through the rocky defile with
noise and foam. This is a peculiarity of these
mountain rivers: the Rospart, that issues at
Villar, in the valley of Perosa, is so covered
with verdure that it can be seen only when
near, and the Subiasc, a tributary of Pellice,
issues at Bobi from a gorge so narrow that
it is only visible exactly in front. Luserna
has ten beautiful towns, and La Tour, the
capital, is so named from the tower which
was anciently the castle on the hill behind
the town. Every name brings up a throng of
memories, — Angrogna, Villar, Bobi, Rora,
— where every rock has been wet with blood,
and every meadow has seen the death of mar-

52 The Italian Waldenses

tyrs. Perosa has six towns and San Martino
eleven. These are the actual Waldensian
Valleys, but there were others on the French
side of the Alps, once inhabited by the Wal-
densians, from which they were banished.
Val Louise, in Dauphiny, was once full of
"heretics," but none are there now, and the
inhabitants are even ignorant of the bloody
history of their ancestors.

In Val Clusone, or Val de Pragela, which
is connected with San Martino by a narrow
pass, the Col du Pis, they were exterminated
by persecution, exile, and confiscation of their
goods. Val Cluson or Pragela in France
joined Val Perosa in Piedmont, and, as the
inhabitants were all brothers of one faith, one
of the towns, La Chapelle, was half in France,
and half in Italy, — the church on one side of
the line, and the house of the pastor on the
other. The Waldensians have disappeared
also from the valleys of Queyras, Mathias,
and Meane, where they once existed. These
French valleys, which were already peopled
by evangelical Christians became the refuge
of the disciples of Waldo in the twelfth cen-
tury. The Italian Waldenses, in the year
1495, sent a colony of farmers into Provence,
which nourished and so increased in number

Geographical Position and Colonies 53

and influence that the attention of the Inquis-
itors was attracted to it, and it was exter-
minated by fire and sword. They sent a colony
in the fourteenth century to Calabria and the
Puglie in southern Italy, which increased in
wealth and founded several towns. These
were all destroyed, and their inhabitants mur-
dered, driven away or forced to apostatize,
while their pastor, John Louis Pascal, was
burned at Rome. They had a colony which
was exterminated at Saluzzo, in Piedmont;
another at Cuneo, and another at Busca.
" The Evangelicals," says an Inquisitor, "were
not only numerous in the valleys, where they
were called Mountaineers or Vallenses, but,
not satisfied with being hidden in the caves
of the mountains, they had the audacity to
sow their false doctrines in the plains of
Piedmont and of Lombardy, and to establish
themselves at Bagnolo, so that they were
called Bagnolese. " At Mantua, at Brescia,
at Bergamo, at Vicenza, at Florence, at
Spoleto, they were known under various
names.

A manuscript, believed to be of the twelfth
century, says that their missions were even
further extended. " Merchants of that people
in the Alps who learn the Bible by heart and

54 The Italian Waldenses

combat the rites of the Church, which they
say are new, reach Switzerland, Bavaria and
upper Italy." They had houses in Florence,
Genoa, and Venice, the latter city alone con-
taining six thousand Waldenses. Long before
the Reformation they existed in Italy, France,
and Germany. Their open friendship with
the German Reformers and the renewed zeal
of their own Christian life kindled such fires
of persecution that their numbers diminished.
In the year 1622 the College of the Propaganda
Fede was established in Rome to persecute
them. In 1686 the entire population of the
Piedmontese Waldensian valleys was put to
death or sent into exile, and Italy at last was
freed from the "heretic." But in three years
and a half they returned. Nine hundred war-
riors, an heroic band, crossed Lake Leman at
night ; in ten days climbed the dreadful moun-
tains of Savoy, and took possession of their
homes in San Martino, Perosa, and Luserna.
Since then they have suffered no bloody per-
secution, and now all Italy is theirs to evan-
gelize according to their means and ability.
But alas ! it is still — Lux htcet in tencbris !

CHAPTER VIII

THE MINISTERS, OR " BARBES "

The pastors of the Waldenses were by them
familiarly called "barbes," a Piedmontese
word, meaning "uncle," used in perilous times
in order to conceal their office. The Papists
called all who recognized the barbes for pas-
tors, barbets. The barbes were acknowledged,
even by some of their adversaries, to be lovers
of virtue and enemies of vice. The papal
clergy in the passion of persecution often
accused them of mysterious crimes, but these
calumnies were always disproved by investi-
gations made before the magistrates of the
places the Waldenses inhabited. The monks
could never show proof of the truth of these
stories which were only invented to respond
to the revelations made by the pastors of
the corruptions in the Church of Rome. A
monk, for instance, would say that in his
youth he had heard things which he would
not repeat and much less write ; and that he

56 The Italian Waldenses

knew well some of the barbes appeared honest
and religious, but he had heard said that there
were others of their religion who were not so.
He dared not name persons, places, or any-
particular facts, but contented himself with
saying that "there were persons yet living
who remembered that their fathers did so and
so." When pressed to be more explicit, he
would say that he meant not to defame the
Waldenses ; but these were things he had seen
written in a book, the author of which he
had forgotten or would not name. But many
bishops, priests, monks, and historians of the
Roman Catholic Church have testified to the
honesty and good conduct of the barbes, and
also to their piety towards God and their
charity to men, admitting that their only
fault was denying the authority of "Holy
Mother Church," and not acknowledging it
as the true Church nor its superstitions as
means of salvation.

Pierre Gilles, the historian of the Waldenses
in the sixteenth century, says that " so many
books written by the pastors in various places
and during many centuries testify in what
esteem they held virtue and good works and
what hatred they felt for every form of vice. "
Unfortunately many of these books were lost

CASCADE OF THE PIS AT MASSELLO.

SCHOOL OF THE BARBES AT PRA DEL TORXO, AXGROGXA.

The Ministers, or "Barbes" 57

during the persecutions of the seventeenth
century and only those books and ancient
documents sent to the libraries of Cambridge
and Geneva by Pastor Leger were preserved.
The Papists took care after every persecution
to destroy as much of the Waldensian litera-
ture as possible. Many of the barbes were
learned men and well versed in the languages
and science of the Scriptures. A knowledge
of the Bible was the distinctive feature of the
ancient and is now of the modern Vaudois,
and it was so especially of the barbes, all
of whom could repeat the Gospels of Saint
Matthew and Saint John, and a part of the
Epistles from memory.

Deprived for centuries of a visible church,
and forced to worship in caves and dens, this
intimate knowledge of God's Word was their
only light. Their school was in the almost
inaccessible solitude of a deep mountain gorge
called Pra del Tor, and their studies were
severe and long-continued, embracing the
Latin, Romaunt, and Italian languages. After
several years of study and retirement, they
were consecrated by the laying-on of hands
and receiving the communion. They were
supported by the voluntary subscriptions of
the people, a division of the collections being

58 The Italian Waldenses

made once a year at the general synod ; one-
third to the ministers, one-third to the poor,
and one-third to the missionaries. But they
were not entirely dependent on these contri-
butions, as every barbe learned some manual
trade or a profession. The greater number
were physicians or surgeons, but many were
artisans, and all knew how to cultivate the
fields and care for the flocks and herds. Be-
fore the invention of printing they copied
large portions of the Scriptures for the use
of their scholars, to whom they also taught
the languages and instructed them in piety
and good works. They visited the sick,
whether called or not; selected arbiters in
disputes; admonished those who conducted
themselves ill, and sometimes excommuni-
cated the incorrigible.

The ancient barbes of the valleys spoke
and used in their writings a language which
was a mixture of the Waldensian idiom and
of that of the surrounding countries. But
the pastors sent from Geneva after the pest
in the sixteenth century, which deprived the
Waldenses of nearly all their barbes, intro-
duced the French language into the valleys.
The missionaries always spoke the languages
of the people they visited, this being the

The Ministers, or c< Barbes " 59

object of their diligent study of languages in
youth at the college of Pra del Tor. Every
year in September the barbes held a general
Council or Synod to review the work of each
one ; to examine and ordain young ministers
and to select the missionaries who were to
visit the distant churches in Italy and other
countries.

These missions generally lasted two years,
and the barbes went two by two ; an old man
called the Regidor, and a young one called
the Coadjuteur. In almost every city of Italy
they had numerous secret adherents who wel-
comed them with joy. Even in papal Rome
there were many who looked for their coming
and gave them hospitality. How beautiful
from the mountains seemed the feet of these
bearers of glad tidings to the dwellers in the
spiritual desert, and the short and blessed
season of their stay gave rich fruits to the
Alpine Church. Every pastor was a mis-
sionary in his turn; the younger ones being
thus initiated in the delicate labor of evan-
gelization under the care of a disciplined
veteran, his superior, to whom he was bound
to render obedience and deference. The older
missionary thus prepared successors worthy of
himself and of the Church, and at last, when

60 The Italian Waldenses

age no longer permitted these fatiguing jour-
neys, reposed in some parish of the valleys
from which he was not moved until death.
The great success which attended these mis-
sions in the south of Italy in the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries was proved
by the bitter cry of the Roman Church against
the spread of gospel truth and by the persecu-
tions which followed. The missionary zeal
of the Waldenses was one of the chief causes
of the persecutions which they endured.
"These Waldenses," said Bernard de Foucald
in the twelfth century, " although condemned
by Pope Lucius II., continued to pour forth
with daring effrontery, far and wide, all over
the world, the poison of their perfidy."

The barbes accepted with joy the missionary
charge given to them by the synod, although
they knew well all the dangers and fatigues
of these journeys. A Vaudois preacher, going
one day into a church at Florence, where there
were several thousand people, heard his mis-
sion denounced from the pulpit by a monk in
these words: "O Fiorenza, what does thy
name mean ? The flower of Italy. And that
thou wast until these Ultramontanes per-
suaded thee that man is justified by faith and
not by works, and herein they lie." The

The Ministers, or "Barbes" 61

pastors came to the synods from all parts of
Europe to preserve union among themselves
and maintain the uniformity of their church
service. At one of these synods, in Val
Cluson, there were one hundred and forty
pastors, and at the synod of Champforans,
after the German Reformation, many of the
German ministers came to confer with them.
The barbes were generally unmarried, in order
to be free for their long journeys, from which
they often never returned. They had no
religious scruples against matrimony, but
would not leave behind them weeping wives
and fatherless children, when often their days
must end in the prisons of the Inquisition or
at the stake. The noblest martyrs were barbes
who met death by fire or torture joyfully or
patiently in the horrible dungeons of the
Inquisition. John Louis Pascal was strangled
and burned, and his ashes thrown into the
Tiber, at Rome, in the year 1560; Geoffroy
Varaglia was burned in the public square of
the castle at Turin; another minister, with
white beard and lovely countenance, so charmed
the executioners that none would put him to
death, although they were ordered to do so,
and he escaped unharmed to the valleys.
Cesar Baronius, a cardinal, and the librarian

62 The Italian Waldenses

of the Vatican in the sixteenth century, when
in Piedmont, knew some of the Vaudois pas-
tors, and often lamented to them the corrup-
tion of the Roman Church, especially in the
profanation of the Holy Sacrament. " Weep
and lament," he said, "for the profanation
of this divine mystery. O God ! the zeal of
thine house hath eaten me up. Impiety,
idolatry, ambition, and venality surround
thine altars."

Yet he dared not openly abandon Rome,
which forgave his invectives on account of his
submission to her will. The Vaudois pas-
tors were less eloquent, but more courageous,
yielding their bodies to the rack and the
flames, but keeping their faith. "Our rule
of conduct," said they, "should be the word
of Jesus : ' He who will confess me on the
earth I will confess in Heaven, and I will
deny him in Heaven who has denied me on
earth.' We prefer to be repulsed by the
Papacy rather than by our Saviour."

_

CHAPTER IX

PERSECUTION BEGUN IN THE YEAR I476

The Waldenses have some tradition, or
record, of thirty-three persecutions, by which
their colonies in Calabria, Apuglie, Provence,
the Plain of Piedmont, and in the Alps of
France were utterly exterminated. Continual
exile, martyrdom, and confiscations of their
goods for many centuries also reduced their
numbers and their strength in the valleys of
Piedmont. In the year 1308 a synod of five
hundred delegates was held in the valley of
Angrogna. The Inquisitors, with their assist-
ants, then invaded the valley, but were re-
pulsed, and the Roman Catholic prior was
killed in the skirmish. Little is known of
this and of other persecutions before the year
1476, when Yolande, surnamed Violante from
the violence of her character, the widow of
Amedeus IX., Duke of Savoy, ordered the
Waldenses to return immediately to the
Roman Church. For no other reason than

64 The Italian Waldenses

their belief, she commanded her nobles to
reduce these hardy mountaineers to silence.
An investigation made by the Holy See showed
the profound difference between the religion
of the Waldenses and of the Roman Church,
and Pope Innocent VIII. issued a bull of
extermination, ordering all nations to arm
and destroy them. He absolved from all sins
and from any vows they had made those who
should put heretics to death. He also annulled
all contracts made in favor of Waldenses;
ordered their servants to abandon them ; for-
bade any one to give them aid, and authorized
robbing them of their possessions.

Thousands of volunteers, vagabonds, fan-
atics, adventurers, assassins, and robbers
gathered from all parts of Italy to execute
the commands of the pretended successor of
Saint Peter. This horde of brigands, in 1488/
marched to the valleys, together with eigh-
teen thousand regular troops, furnished by
Charles I. of Piedmont, the son of Yolande or
Violante, and by the King of France. The
persecuted people were accused of no crime,
even in the pontiff's bull of extermination,
except the " seducing of their neighbors by an
appearance of extreme sanctity." But God,
in whom they trusted, raised his arm for their

Persecution begun in 1476 6$

defence. The Israel of the Alps were inspired
by superhuman courage, while the hearts of
their persecutors seemed filled with unnatural
fear.

The legate of the Pope, Archdeacon Albert
Cattanee, before beginning this cruel work,
established himself in a convent at Pinerolo,
a town at the entrance of the valleys, and
sent forward preaching monks to convert the
Waldenses by their arguments. These mis-
sionaries had no success, and the army then
advanced into the valleys. The Waldenses
made a touching appeal to the hard heart of
their persecutor. " Do not condemn us with-
out a hearing, for we are Christians, and
faithful subjects. Our barbes are ready to
prove that our doctrines are those of the
Word of God. We acknowledge no other
authority than the Bible, and are happy in a
pure and simple life. We despise the love
of riches and the thirst for domination by
which our persecutors are devoured. Our
trust in God is greater than our desire to
please men. Have a care not to call down
His wrath upon yourselves in persecuting us,
and know that if God so wills all the force that
you have gathered against us can do nothing. "

And so it was: for the long lines of

66 The Italian Waldenses

Cattanee's army, spread out weakly over the
plains, were broken everywhere, and the bat-
talions that came to crush the hydra of heresy
were driven back in precipitous flight. The
inhabitants had withdrawn to the mountain
heights, from whence they could easily descend
to attack the enemy in the plains, using swords,
arrows, and pickaxes for weapons, and protect-
ing themselves by great shields hastily made
of the bark of chestnut trees, lined with skins
of animals. Full of address and vigor, and,
above all, full of confidence in God, and well
placed for defence, they killed many of the
foe, and had but little loss themselves. But
they were nearly overcome on the heights of
San Giovanni or Saint John, leading to the
mountains of Angrogna, a natural fortress,
where they had taken their families for
refuge. Seeing the enemy mounting step
by step, and drawing their ranks closer, the
women, children, and old men fell on their
knees, crying out all together, with fervor born
of great distress, " O our God, help us! O
God, give ours strength! O God, save us."

"My men shall give you the answer," cried
one of the chiefs of the invaders, surnamed
Noir de Mondovi on account of his dark com-
plexion, scorning their prayers. But raising

FROM AXGROGNA TO PRA DEL TORNO.

Persecution begun in 1476 67

his visor at that moment, to prove how little
fear he had of these poor people, this new
Goliath was struck between the eyes and killed
by a stone from the hand of Pierre Revel
of Angrogna. The Waldenses, seizing the
moment of panic and terror which took pos-
session of the invading troops, made an impet-
uous attack, and drove them down the moun-
tain vanquished and dispersed to the plain.
Then on the mountain, with their delivered
families, they threw themselves upon their
knees to render thanks to the God of armies,
who had given them this signal victory. Even
their enemies were soon persuaded that God
fought with the heroic mountaineers. When
Cattanee the next day organized a new ex-
pedition by another road up the valley of
Angrogna, hoping to reach the height of Pra
del Tor, from which he would have been
master of all the country near, a fog — one
of those which suddenly arise in the Alps —
fell upon them just as they entered the most
difficult and dangerous paths.

Unacquainted with the roads, and marching
single file over these rocks, on the edge of
precipices, they yielded at the first attack of
the Waldenses, and were easily defeated.
Those in front fell back hastily upon the

68 The Italian Waldenses

others; disorder followed; the retreat became
a flight, and the flight a catastrophe. Many
fell over the slippery precipices which the
fog hid from view; some were lost in the
ravines,. and a few only succeeded in escaping.
This decisive victory, due more to the will
of God than to the valor of the Waldenses,
caused the deliverance of the valley, as
Cattanee did not return.

To this day, after four centuries, the place
where the captain of this ill-fated expedition,
Saguet de Planghere, fell over the rocks, is
called by his name. Not only in Angrogna,
but on all the mountains near, where they
were attacked, the Waldenses defended them-
selves with heroic courage. Favored by the
nature of the places, they put the crusaders to
flight by rolling down upon them avalanches
of rocks, and then descending to fight hand
to hand. The Legate of the Pope transferred
his operations to Dauphiny in the Val Louise,
where he pillaged and persecuted the unfor-
tunate inhabitants. Seven hundred of his
troops, returning drunk with the massacres
they had committed in Dauphiny, entered
in disorder a village of the Valley of San
Martino, believing themselves conquerors
there also. But, suddenly attacked on every

Persecution begun in 1476 69

side, they were all killed or put to flight, the
standard-bearer alone escaping to a ravine,
where he remained two days, and then crept
forth frozen and famished to beg charity of
the Vaudois.

This was granted with the generous forget-
fulness of injury which Christ inspires in his
faithful servants, and he was sent home to
report the total defeat of his companions.
This army, which seemed so formidable, faded
away like clouds before the sun. It was said
to this martyr people, " Fear not, little flock,
for it is your Father's good pleasure to give
you the kingdom ; and if God be for you who
can be against you ? "

The Duke of Savoy withdrew his own troops ;
sent away the legate on pretence that his
mission was terminated, and himself met repre-
sentatives of the different Vaudois churches
at Pinerolo, to discuss the terms of peace. It
was during these conferences that the Prince
asked to see some of those children who, he
believed, were born with black teeth and
horned feet. "Is it possible," he said, when
they were brought to him, " that these charm-
ing creatures are the children of heretics?
They are the most beautiful children I have
ever seen."

CHAPTER X

PERSECUTION OF A.D. 1 56 1

Never was the promise of God, " Call upon
Me in the day of trouble and I will deliver
thee," more clearly fulfilled than it was to
the martyr Waldenses in the general persecu-
tion of the year 1561. The invasion which
threatened to annihilate them was converted
into the most brilliant campaign which these
heroes had ever made, and they compelled
their enemies to retire from the valleys.
Nearly a century had passed since the last
general persecution of the valleys of Pied-
mont,— years marked by the most bloody per-
secutions of their brethren in Provence, and
by continual vexations and martyrdoms of
themselves.

The German Reformation had revived their
faith, and at the Synod of Champforans, in
Angrogna, when Farel and other Reformers
met with them, they vowed to confess their
opinions more courageously than before.

Persecution of A. D. 156 1 71

The clouds grew darker and darker over the
valleys from that time.

Their friends in Switzerland, in Germany,
and in Dauphiny exhorted them to put their
trust in God, and deputies from Pragela, in
Dauphiny, met with those of Luserna, to re-
new the alliance between these churches of
the Alps. On one of the snowy Alpine
heights they swore eternal friendship in the
name of their God. It was a scene worthy
of the ancient ages, — more romance than
history.

The day after, Jan. 21, 1561, a decree was
published in the valleys, ordering all the
Waldenses to attend mass. If their decision
was not made within twenty-four hours they
were subject to all the punishments reserved
for heretics, — the galleys, the cord, the stake,
and the gallows. In this sad extremity the
Waldenses offered ardent prayers to God for
deliverance, counsel, and guidance, and with
one voice decided that as they would not
abjure, and it was impossible for them to find
a refuge elsewhere, they would defend their
lives and their homes unto the death. " Even
the smallest worm," says the naive ancient
chronicler, "will do that."

The barbes of Luserna and of Pragela,

72 The Italian Waldenses

standing in the midst of a dense crowd of
believers, promised, in their name, with their
hands upon the Bible, to keep that sacred
Word of God entire according to the usage
of the ancient Apostolic Church, and to perse-
vere in their holy religion even at the peril of
their lives in order to transmit it whole and
pure to their children. " We promise aid and
succor to our persecuted brethren, without
regard to our individual interests, but to the
common cause, not regarding man, but God."
Scarcely was this solemn vow taken than
several voices cried out with enthusiasm: —
"A shameful abjuration is asked of us to-
morrow ; let us to-morrow make a strong pro-
test against the persecuting idolatry which
demands it of us." Patience and humility
were exhausted, and the time to show energy
had come. Before dawn the next morning,
instead of going to the mass, they crowded,
armed, to the Protestant temple of Bobi, and
cleared it of the rosaries, the candles, and
the images with which the Romanists had
filled it; their minister preaching afterwards,
from Isaiah xlv. 20, — " They have no knowl-
edge that set up the wood of their graven
image, and pray unto a god that cannot save."
Encouraged by the eloquence of their min-

Persecution of A. D. 1561 73

ister, the people set out for Villar, three
miles distant, singing inspiring hymns as
they went, to purge the temple there also
of idols. This was a childish iconoclastic
act of destruction, but the first step in the
drama that was to follow, as every man knew
that by this act his life and goods were
forfeited.

The twenty-four hours of grace were ended,
and the Waldenses of Bobi met the garrison
of Villar, which had gone out to make them
prisoners. They drove them back to the town,
and besieged the fortress, where the monks,
the judges, the lords, and gentlemen took
refuge. They placed sentinels, and prepared
ammunition, and the next day drove back the
troops from Torre Pellice, which came to
relieve the besieged. Three times during the
next ten days they drove back the rescuing
troops, until the besieged, reduced to extrem-
ities for want of water and provisions, and
ignorant of the attempts at rescue made by
their friends, gave themselves up on condi-
tion that their lives should be saved, and that
they should be accompanied to their own camp
by two pastors. "They showed thus," says
quaint Peter Gilles, " how much they trusted
these hated ministers."

74 The Italian Waldenses

This victory caused the traitorous leader of
the invading army, the Count of Trinity, to
devise a new method of warfare. As he could
not vanquish them united in their native
mountains, he resolved to disunite them by
fair means or foul, before destroying them.
He sent a gentle message to the inhabitants
of the Valley of Angrogna, that they had
nothing to fear from him, provided they re-
frained from mixing with the affairs of the
other valleys. But, taught by bitter experi-
ence, the Waldenses were not deceived, and
returned no answer. They made intrench-
ments, established posts and signals, prepared
ammunition, and organized bands of "flying
companies," with bows and arrows. These
youthful heroes were always accompanied in
their sallies by two pastors, who calmed their
excesses of anger and prevented useless
effusion of blood.

The righteousness of their cause must be
proved by the justice of their conduct, and
every morning and evening, as well as at the
beginning and end of every battle they knelt
to ask for grace and guidance in this hard
extremity. A second attack was easily re-
pulsed, and the third became a terrible rout
for the invaders, and a glorious victory for

kJxm I *&

Persecution of A. D. 1561 75

the Waldenses. The Count of Trinity, who
had brought all his forces and employed all
his strategy to vanquish the despised enemy,
wished to surprise Pra del Tor, the citadel on
the heights of "Angrogna, a green oasis shut
in by terrible rocks and precipices. There
the persecuted people had retired, carrying
with them mills and furnaces, and all things
necessary for subsistence. The invader divided
his army into three parts, to approach the
strong place from different points; but this
division proved his ruin, for one by one the
parts of his army were vanquished and almost
destroyed. They fled before the victorious
"flying companies," and, unable to mount as
rapidly as the others came down, were driven
over precipices and into ravines. Two of
their chiefs were killed, and one of them was
beheaded with his own sword. They would
have been exterminated without the interven-
tion of the pastors, who ran to the place of
carnage to defend those who could no longer
defend themselves. "To death! to death!"
cried the young Vaudois, excited by the ardor
of their victory. " No ! on your knees," cried
the pastor, " to thank the God of battles for
the success that He has given us."

All that day in green Pra del Tor the

y6 The Italian Waldenses

families of these warriors had prayed without
ceasing, and when at evening they knew that
the prayer had been answered, they made the
rocks echo with songs of joy and triumph,
and praises to God. The victors returned
with arms and booty taken from their ene-
mies, and never had the wild rocks of Pra del
Tor witnessed such a collection of swords,
poignards, halberds, and cuirasses.

In revenge for this defeat, the Count of
Trinity burned the town of Rora, not far from
Villar, and drove the people to the snowy
heights of a mountain near, where the night
surprised them. But they saw the bonfires,
and heard the songs of joy at Villar, and took
courage to press on to their friends.

Many other efforts were made by the per-
secuting army to subdue the Waldenses, but
without success. "To-day we shall sweep
these heretics away," said one of these soldiers,
as they started for the attack. "Sir," said
his hostess, "if our religion is better than
theirs you will have the victory, if not, it is
you who will be swept away. " The fear of
them fell on all the invaders, and the soldiers
at last refused to join the army of the Count
of Trinity. Hundreds fell in every attack,
while the Waldenses lost, only fourteen in all

Persecution of A. D. 1561 77

these battles. It was said that the death of
one Waldensian cost that of one hundred of
their enemies. The latter were half van-
quished at the mere idea of meeting these
invincible foes, and a panic of terror took
hold of them before a battle began, for they
said, "Certainly God is with them, and we
do wrong." The Count of Trinity himself
sat on a rock one day after a defeat, weeping
for the death of a friend killed in the attack.
He made another treacherous assault in the
midst of a truce proposed by himself, but was
repulsed, as usual, with great loss, and, fall-
ing sick, his army was recalled. The Duke
of Savoy, Emanuel Philibert, then at Cavour,
granted to his ever-faithful subjects amnesty
for the past, liberty of conscience, return of
the banished, and permission for apostates to
return to their faith. This clemency was
due to the influence of a woman — Margaret,
Duchess of Savoy — who was a Protestant.

CHAPTER XI

PERSECUTION OF EASTER, 1655

" To propagate the faith and to extirpate here-
tics," was the motto of the Congregation of
the Propaganda, founded in Rome in the year
1622. The Council of Trent before that had
recommended the persecution of "depraved
heretics," and the Council of Constance had
declared that no faith was to be kept with
them. The most conspicuous persecutor of
the Waldenses in the seventeenth century, the
Marquis of Pianezza, in Turin, found, there-
fore, authority in his Church for all the cruelty
and perfidy which he practised on the defence-
less Israel of the Alps. \

Jesuitism had destroyed in^him the honor
of a soldier, and all nobility of character.
He was perfidious, but courteous; cruel but
devout, and he hesitated to employ no means
that would serve his end. He was guilty, in
Passion Week of the year 1655, of an act of
perfidy without precedent, even in the history

Persecution of Easter, 1655 79

of the Waldcnses. The Council of "propa-
ganda fide et extirpandis haereticis," of Turin,
of which Pianezza was a member, was com-
posed of the highest dignitaries of the court
of the Duke of Savoy, Charles Emanuel II.
It met regularly at the residence of the Arch-
bishop, and had subordinate councils estab-
lished in all parts of Piedmont to spy out and
persecute the Waldenses.

It urged the Duke of Savoy to cruelties and
oppressions foreign to his character, which
placed him in a shameful position before the
other nations of Europe.

"The spirit of the Papacy alone," says
Muston, "aroused this tempest. Rome was
the cause of all ! Rome, barbarous and
persecuting ! "

The decree of January, 1655, ordered all
the heads of families in nine villages of the
lower valleys to retire within three days to
Bobi, Villar, Angrogna, and Rora, the only
places where "the religion" would be toler-
ated, and to sell, during the twenty days fol-
lowing, all their houses and lands unless they
consented to become Roman Catholics. They
obeyed, but sent deputies to Turin to repre-
sent their distress to the Duke, who referred
them to the Council. The Council refused to

80 The Italian Waldenses

receive them because they were Protestants,
and obliged them to select a Roman Catholic
to plead their cause, who was forced to present
their petition for clemency upon his knees.
Three months were consumed in this way,
delegation after delegation being sent by the
men of the valleys to treat with their foes
without obtaining relief or redress. While
the last of these delegations was at Turin,
waiting the pleasure of Pianezza to receive
them, he had treacherously left the city with
his army, and was already at the entrance of
the valleys. On the eve of Palm Sunday he
appeared before Torre Pellice and the few
inhabitants remaining there, ordering them
to lodge eight hundred of his men and three
hundred horses.

All that moonlight night the Waldenses
resisted his entrance to their town, and when
assailed in the rear by a part of Pianezza' s
troops, led by one who knew the roads through
the fields and gardens, they fled through the
ranks of their enemies to the heights.

Thus began that Holy Week of 1655, which
the Papists celebrated by a horrible massacre
and incredible acts of perfidy.

During the night the invaders sang the
"Te Deum," and in the morning, after mass,

Persecution of Easter, 1655 81

sallied forth to the villages and farmhouses,
to chase the heretics, killing all they found
by the way, and burning houses after destroy-
ing the inmates.

That night new troops arrived, making the
invading army fifteen thousand men.

It was no longer possible to doubt that
the old project of the extermination of the
Waldenses, so long fomented and acknowl-
edged by the most zealous in the Roman
Church, was at last to be executed. The
poor mountaineers, ill prepared for defence,
and in numbers one to a hundred of the
enemy, were attacked at Torre Pellice, St.
John, Angrogna, and Bricherasio, but drove
back the invaders on Monday and Tuesday,
losing two men and killing fifty.

Pianezza then employed perfidy, a weapon
which has often succeeded in vanquishing the
Waldenses.

On Wednesday morning, two hours before
daybreak, he sent trumpeters and messengers,
inviting them to confer with him and estab-
lish peace with his Royal Highness, the Duke
of Savoy. He gave the deputies from all the
towns an excellent dinner, and persuaded them
that the inhabitants of the higher valleys had
nothing to fear. He professed to be pained
6

82 The Italian Waldenses

at the excesses that had been committed by
his soldiers, and spoke of the difficulty of
restraining so large a number of men, express-
ing a strong desire to send most of them back
to Turin. If each town would receive and
lodge a few of them, thus giving the Duke a
proof of their loyalty and confidence, he could
send back the remainder, and the towns of
the lower valleys would be treated with less
rigor.

Deceived by these fair promises, the dep-
uties agreed to receive the soldiers of the
Marquis of Pianezza, and that same evening
permitted them to enter their houses and take
possession of their strong places. The mur-
derers, impatient to begin the massacre which
had been secretly ordered, killed some of the
people that night, and set fire to a village
called Taillaret. The blaze of the burning
houses, the cries of the fugitives, and the
shouts of the persecutors convinced the inhab-
itants of the valleys too late of their fatal mis-
take. They lighted bonfires on the heights
as signals of distress, and sent messengers
from village to village to warn the people
against the traitors. But they were now in
the power of the enemy, and at four o'clock,
on Saturday morning, the day before Easter,

Persecution of Easter, 1655 83

the signal for the general massacre so long in
preparation was given.

Rested and refreshed, the murderers turned
to kill their hosts, who had kindly received
them. The horrors which followed are beyond
description. A cry of anguish rose from every
house. Little children were torn from the
arms of their mothers and beaten against the
rocks, and the old and the sick — women as
well as men — burned in their beds, or hacked
in pieces, or mutilated, or skinned, or left dying
in the sun, and exposed to wild beasts. Others
were tied naked, like a ball, with the head be-
tween the legs, and rolled over the precipices.

A priest and a monk of the Order of Saint
Francis of Assisi, escorted by troops, rushed
from house to house, urging on the carnage
and seeking for those who were in hiding.
The mountains echoed with the crumbling of
ruins, with the fall of avalanches and rocks,
and living bodies.

Children left orphans, and lost in the woods,
or torn from the poor relics of their families,
were carried away, like lambs to the butcher,
to be educated in convents and monasteries in
the faith of the murderers of their parents.

Leger, the historian, who with the hero
Janavel had opposed the reception of the

84 The Italian Waldenses

crusaders into the homes of their people,
visited all the places of the massacre after it
was accomplished, and wrote down from the
mouths of the persecuted their individual
experiences. "Let no one say that I have
exaggerated these horrors," he says, "on ac-
count of what I have myself suffered. What
shall I say? My God, the pen falls from my
hands ! " The heart recoils from repeating
the terrible account he gives of what he saw
and heard. The lovely valley of Luserna
seemed a burning furnace, where cries that
daily grew fainter attested that a martyr
people once lived there. All of these noble
and courageous sufferers might have saved
their lives by abjuring their faith. Many
continued firm in the prisons of Turin and
Villafranca ten and twenty years after, for-
gotten by all but God.

Numerous apostates who had yielded to fear
and despair dragged on miserable lives, bear-
ing a heavy burden of shame and remorse.
Two of these unhappy men — far more un-
happy because they had been pastors — were
forced by the Jesuits, their masters, to visit
in prison Michelin of Bobi, who had suffered
horrible mutilations and tortures, and re-
mained firm in the faith, notwithstanding

Persecution of Easter, 1655 6$ •

the torments of mind and body to which he
was still subjected. Their dreadful duty was
to persuade the old man to abjure, as they
had done. They afterwards returned to the
fold, touched, perhaps, by the awful surprise
of Michelin, when he heard their object in
coming, which caused his death.

James and David Prins of Villar suffered
intense torments in the prison of Luserna,
without yielding their religious opinions.
These were two of six brothers who had mar-
ried six sisters, forming one large patriarchal
family, the eldest brother and sister acting as
heads. This family consisted of more than
forty persons living together in harmony, all
of whom had their appointed tasks in the
house, the vineyards, and the fields. Scenes
like this, of touching Christian simplicity
and love were converted by this persecution,

— known ever after as the "Easter of 1655,"

— into a desert.

Accumulated horrors appalled the inhab-
itants, and greatly reduced their numbers.

This massacre, prepared in cold blood, and
with horrible premeditation, was followed,
thirty-one years later, by another, which
resulted in the total exile for three years
and a half of the Waldensian people.

CHAPTER XII

THE "GLORIOUS RETURN " IN 1689

The glorious return of the Waldenses to their
homes in the Piedmontese valleys was an
episode in the great war which, in 1689,
convulsed the continent of Europe. Led by
the pastor-hero Henri Arnaud, who acted on
the counsels of Joshua Janavel, they availed
themselves of a fortunate moment, when
both of their persecutors, Louis XIV. and
Victor Amedeus II., were occupied elsewhere
to escape from their kind entertainers in
Switzerland. Three years and a half before,
Louis XIV., "le Grand Monarque," to satisfy
an uneasy conscience, became the champion
of the Papacy, persecuted the French Protes-
tants by revoking the Edict of Nantes, and
urged the Duke of Savoy to drive out the
Waldenses from Piedmont, threatening to
send fourteen thousand French soldiers into
the valleys, and reducing him to the alter-
native of seeing his kingdom invaded by

The "Glorious Return" in 1689 87

foreigners, or of persecuting the heretics
himself.

Victor Amedeus II. preferred the latter, and
ordered the Waldenses to cease the exercise
of their religion immediately and forever.
Every religious meeting was prohibited on
pain of loss of life and property ; all ancient
privileges were abolished; the churches must
be demolished ; pastors and teachers must
embrace the Catholic faith or leave the coun-
try within fifteen days ; and children must be
given within eight days after birth to the
curates, on pain for the mother of being pub-
licly whipped, and for the father of five years
in the galleys.

This was war to the knife.

" O messa, o morte," — " Go to mass or you
die." Three times the victims sent humble
supplications for mercy to Turin, but received
no answer, for their sovereign, placed between
two fires, refused to listen to their cry, and
soon began the persecution, notwithstanding
the prayers in their behalf, made by Protes-
tants of Germany, Holland, and England.
On Good Friday of 1686, when the people
were gathered in the church of Angrogna,
Pastor Arnaud prayed, " Lord Jesus ! Thou
who hast suffered and died for us, give us

88 The Italian Waldenses

grace to suffer and die for Thee. He who is
faithful to the end shall be saved." Then all
said together, " I can do all things through
Christ, who strengtheneth me." The Lord's
table at Easter was so crowded that the com-
memoration was held in the open air, and for
many it was the last time.

The fatal order was given on April 22, 1686,
and in one month the valleys were depopu-
lated. Two armies, the French under General
Catinat, and the Piedmontese under Gabriel
of Savoy, moved in concert against this martyr
people. Some were burned alive, some flayed,
some hung to the trees, some thrown from
precipices, some used as targets for the sol-
diers. Forty-two men and a few women and
children retired to the heights of one moun-
tain, and an equal number to another, where
they dwelt in caves and fed on wild herbs and
the meat of wolves. But the remainder of
the population, about twelve thousand — thir-
teen thousand having been killed — were
driven like cattle to the prisons of Turin,
thirty miles distant. Four thousand babies
were torn from their mothers' arms, and dis-
persed in convents or Catholic families. Five
hundred adults were presented to Louis XIV.
for the galleys at Marseilles.

CATINAT.

The "Glorious Return" in 1689 89

Eight thousand died in the prisons of Turin,
where they were heaped one upon another,
fed on black bread and foul water, and made
to sleep on the bare bricks, on the earth or
wet straw, eaten up by vermin and left all
night without a light, even when the sick
were dying. They were melted by the heat
in summer and frozen by the cold in winter,
while the priests and nuns sought by every
infamous means to convert them.

When the order came, obtained by the
entreaties of the faithful Swiss, to liberate
the survivors and send them over the moun-
tains, although it was in the depth of winter,
to a refuge in Switzerland, all were impatient
to leave those terrible prisons.

Weak and sick, they prepared to leave at
night, dressed as they were, in rags. The
order was read to them at five o'clock on a
winter evening, and they walked ten or twelve
miles that night, leaving behind, on their
way, the dying and the dead.

The valleys were left desolate, the churches
destroyed, the houses burned, the mountains
strewn with corpses..

"Heresy is extirpated; there are no more
Waldenses in the valleys; their religion
and their name are forever proscribed in

go The Italian Waldenses

Italy!" cried the Pope and Louis XIV. of
France.

Three thousand five hundred Waldenses
took the way of exile with no hope of ever
seeing again their beloved valleys, and yet,
three years and a half later, they returned
with joy, singing : " The Lord hath done great
things for us, whereof we are glad."

Three thousand reached Switzerland, but
they were walking skeletons, weary, footsore,
famished, and half clothed. They were re-
ceived with a transport of pity, love, admira-
tion, and generosity. Shoes were given them
immediately; five thousand yards of linen,
and as many of woollen stuffs were soon made
into garments, and they were taken joyfully
to the homes of their friends. But, not-
withstanding all this kindness, the exiles
pined for their own land, and made two un-
successful efforts to return before that of
1689.

By the treaty with the Duke of Savoy,
Switzerland promised to detain the exiles
even by force, and prevent their return to
Piedmont. Many were sent on to Wurtem-
berg, to Magdeburg, to the Grisons, and to
the Palatinate. Those who went to the last-
named country suffered in the religious war,

,. • .

HENRI ARNAUD.

The "Glorious Return" in 1689 91

and returned to Switzerland more miserable,
if possible, than before.

All must be done in secret, and the
Waldenses would never have accomplished
their return without the aid and direction of
the two remarkable men, Joshua Janavel and
Henri Arnaud.

Joshua was a soldier and native of the
valleys in 1655, who had been banished to
Switzerland. Too old to take an active part
in the heroic return, he yet merits a chief
place in its history. He was the soul of the
enterprise, and for the part he took in it was
afterwards expelled by the Swiss from Geneva.
Together with Arnaud, in secret, he studied
the route they should take and the means of
passing through a hostile country. He knew
all the mountain passes, and counselled the
taking of hostages, perfect union among them-
selves, special care of their leaders, and, above
all, constant prayer and faith in God. This
was all he could do; but his Christian heroism
was so well known that these counsels were
obeyed.

Pastor Arnaud — barbe as well as leader —
was forty years old. Before attempting the
perilous return, he visited William of Orange,
who encouraged him, and supplied him with

92 The Italian Waldenses

money, well pleased to aid an enemy of
Louis XIV.

Too long would be the story of the passage
by night of the nine hundred warriors over
Lake Leman, and the ten days of fatigue,
war, and pain on the mountains of Savoy.
They reached, at last, the borders of their
valleys, and in the first town took down the
door of a church to make a pulpit outside for
Arnaud to preach from.

Driven back by the soldiers of the Duke of
Savoy to Balsille, they defended themselves
on that mountain all the winter, and found
there a crop of ungathered corn, covered by a
merciful Providence until then by the snow.
Aided by the fogs and winds and rains and
snows, which, a French officer said, " seemed
to be at their command," they resisted for
months the attacks of an army of fifteen
thousand or twenty thousand men. Retreat-
ing from their barricades, fighting inch by
inch, and at last driven to the very summit
of Balsille, hope seemed lost.

But one of their captains led them, aided
as usual by a fog, which hid them from their
enemies, along the edge of a precipice.
Escaped from that snare, they saw nothing
before them but to wander from one moun-

VICTOR AMEDEUS II. DUKE OF SAVOY AND
PRINCE OF PIEDMONT.

From an engraving by De l'Amerssini. Published in Paris, 1684

The "Glorious Return " in 1689 93

tain to another, until all had left their bones
in the snow.

But a great deliverance awaited them, and
that very day they heard the wonderful tid-
ings that Victor Amedeus had joined the
league of their friend, William of Orange.

The siege of Balsille excited the wonder
of Napoleon I., who considered it one of the
greatest military deeds in history. Yet it is
regarded with indifference by the thirty mil-
lion inhabitants of Italy, few of whom have
heard of it or know the glorious history of
the Waldenses.

They returned to their beloved valleys, and
with joy remembered the Psalm, — " If it had
not been the Lord who was on our side, now
may Israel say . . . when men rose up against
us then they had swallowed us up quick, when
their wrath was kindled against us."

CHAPTER XIII

EXTIRPATION OF THE COLONY IN CALABRIA

More than two centuries before the persecu-
tion in Calabria, a colony of Waldenses left
the valleys of Piedmont, and settled on those
fertile slopes of the Apennines in southern
Italy. In the year 1340 two young Walden-
sian farmers were overheard at a tavern by
the Marquis of Spinello of Calabria, express-
ing their desire to emigrate from the valleys
of Piedmont, which had become too small for
the growing population, the fields not yield-
ing sufficient for their wants. " My friends,"
said the stranger, " if you will come with me
I can give you rich fields in exchange for your
rocks in a country where there is more land
than there are laborers to till it." This was
the beginning of the colony that flourished
and grew rich in Calabria, and was finally
destroyed by the murder of nearly all its
members.

Extirpation of Calabrian Colony 95

The two young farmers were sent, like
Caleb and Joshua, to spy out the land; and
on their report that it abounded in all kinds
of fruit trees, in olives, and vines, chestnut,
walnut, and oak trees, the emigration was
decided upon.

Young couples were hastily married, but
the joy of the new alliances was clouded by
the anguish of separation from the friends left
behind.

Houses and lands were sold, and the emi-
grants set out for their new home, carrying
the Bible with them, as the ancient Israelites
carried the ark of the covenant, and trans-
planting their laborious habits and pure
morals to the other extremity of Italy. The
entire population of the valleys accompanied
them to the foot of their mountains, the aged
fathers and mothers tearfully embracing, for
the last time, those dear ones who would
probably never return, and praying the God
of their fathers to bless them in their distant
homes.

Silently the emigrants departed over the
green plain of Piedmont, and after twenty-
five days of fatiguing travel reached Calabria.
Their hearts often turned longingly to the
valleys; but they had with them familiar

g6 The Italian Waldenses

objects, dear friends, and that trust in God
which is worth more than native land.

Towns had grown up around them, to which
they gave the names of those in Piedmont
familiar to their childhood, and the colony
became rich and prosperous.

The Marquis of Spinello and other propri-
etors rented them land at a low rate, which
they cultivated according to their own ideas.
They were granted the right to unite them-
selves in independent communities, to elect
their own civil and ecclesiastical rulers, and
to levy taxes without giving account to any
one. This was liberty almost unknown at
that period, and they knew well its value, for
they drew up a kind of charter of these rights,
which was confirmed by the King of Naples,
then Ferdinand of Aragon. Their neat and
prosperous towns, Borgo d'Oltramontani, San
Sisto, San Vincenzo, and seven others pre-
sented a striking contrast to the filth and
misery of the Roman Catholic villages near
them. For the first time in Italy the Wald-
enses made this contrast evident which is seen
wherever Protestants and Roman Catholics
live side by side. The Marquis of Spinello,
impressed by their wealth and prosperity,
offered them on his land the site of another

Extirpation of Calabrian Colony 97

town, and authorized them to protect it with
walls. This town, called La Guardia, was
afterwards the centre of the persecution.

The colony was increased at the end of the
fourteenth century by the persecuted brethren
of Provence, who settled in Le Puglie, on the
borders of Calabria. Emigrants from all the
Waldensian colonies were thus gathered in
the south of Italy. They were visited regu-
larly by the barbes, who came every two years
to maintain their faith pure, and to keep them
in remembrance of the mother country in
Piedmont. Until the Reformation, these
Christians lived in peace, not going to mass,
or worshipping images, or having their chil-
dren baptized by the priests, and were pro-
tected in their faith by their landlords. Land-
lords and priests were both persuaded by the
large rents and tithes they gave to look over
their heretical doctrines, until the general
persecutions that followed the Reformation
reached Calabria.

The excuses made for them by their land-
lords, that they were charitable to the poor,
just in their dealings, and fearing God, no
longer served, then, to protect them from the
terrors of Rome.

Aroused by the example of their brethren
7

98 The Italian Waldenses

in the valleys, and following the counsel of
the German Reformers, they bravely resolved
to openly assert their existence as an Evan-
gelical church, and asked the Synod to send
them a fixed pastor. Full of this religious
zeal, they did not heed the prudent counsels
of Barbe Gilles, who, on his last visit, advised
them to temporize and secretly arrange their
affairs so that they could retire to the valleys
on the approach of the storm. A few did so
and were saved; but the rest, loth to leave
their pleasant homes and the comparative
wealth, which in two centuries had accumu-
lated, for the poverty of the valleys, remained,
and were annihilated.

The pastor sent to them was John Louis
Pascal, a young soldier, born a Roman Cath-
olic, in Cuneo, of Piedmont, who had been
converted, and studied theology at Geneva.

Two days before he was chosen by the
Synod for the mission in Calabria, he became
affianced to Camilla Guarini, like himself a
refugee from Piedmont at Geneva. The poor
girl, on hearing his destination, said, weeping,
"Alas! so far from me — so near to Rome."

They parted, never to meet again on earth ;
but the letters of Pascal to her from Calabria
and from his prisons in Cosenza and Rome

Extirpation of Calabrian Colony 99

are models of Christian love, patience, and
heroism.

His zeal and courage in Calabria soon drew
upon him the wrath of the priesthood. He
was kept a prisoner seven months in the house
of the Marquis of Spinello, two months at
Cosenza, and after a cruel journey to Rome
was imprisoned there six months in the dun-
geon of the Torre di Nona, only to issue from
it to his trial at the convent of Minerva, and
the day following to his death in the square
of Castel Sant' Angelo. Before the Pope and
cardinals he proclaimed his faith, calling the
Pope Anti-Christ, and making them wish
" that he were dumb, or the people who heard
him deaf."

He was strangled, his body burned, and the
ashes thrown into the Tiber.

The martyrdom of Pascal at Rome, and
of his companions, Stephen Negrin and Mark
Uscegli, who died from famine and torture in
the prison of Cosenza, drew the attention of
the Roman Inquisition to the Evangelical
churches of Calabria.

The chief Inquisitor, Cardinal Alexandrini,
who was present at the martyrdom of Pascal,
went to Calabria, and employed all the usual
arts of treachery to betray the Protestants.

ioo The Italian Waldenses

First, at San Sisto, then at La Guardia, and
afterwards, one by one, in all the Waldensian
towns except those of Le Puglie, from which
the inhabitants escaped to Piedmont, the
people were betrayed, deceived, tortured, im-
prisoned, flayed alive, decapitated, or burned
to death. Their corpses, entire or in frag-
ments, lined the roads from Montalto for
thirty-six miles, and the air was pestilential.
Even the Roman Catholics were seized with
horror, and an eye-witness of the murder of
eighty-eight persons in La Guardia has left
a thrilling description of the scene. "I can
liken these executions," he says, "only to a
butchery. The executioners led out the vic-
tims one by one, wrapped a cloth about the
head, made them kneel down in a place out-
side, and then cut off their heads with a knife.
The same bloody cloth served to bind the eyes
of all. I leave you to imagine this spectacle.
I am yet weeping at the remembrance of it.
The meekness and patience of those here-
tics was extraordinary. All of the old died
calmly; only the young betrayed some terror.
I tremble with horror when I remember the
executioner with the bloody knife between
his teeth and the dripping towel in his hand,
who entered the house and brought out the

Extirpation of Calabrian Colony 101

victims one by one to martyrdom and death,
just as sheep are killed at the slaughter-
house."

Words fail to describe the tortures of these
persecuted ones. Women were burned to
death, men were thrown from towers, — every
torture was applied; some were covered with
pitch and sulphur before being burned. The
colony was destroyed; none remained to tell
the tale except the few miserable apostates
and a remnant who made their way through
unexampled perils and fatigues to Piedmont.
But the memory yet remains at La Guardia.
The half-ruined church, with part of the
word " Evangelica " on its front, is there, and
the people — descendants of apostates — show
where the blood ran down the hill in that
infamous massacre.

When Signor Pons, the Waldensian pastor
at Naples, a few years since, visited them,
and spoke to them in the Waldensian dialect,
which they still retain, they gathered around
him in the street, and some wept as they
said to him : " Why have our people so long
deserted us ? "

CHAPTER XIV

LANGUAGE CHANGED AFTER THE PEST
IN 163O

The language of the Waldenses was violently
changed, in the year 1630, from Italian to
French, after the pest, which deprived them
of all their barbes but two, and carried off
two-thirds of the population of the valleys.

They accepted the language of the Swiss
pastors sent to their aid from Geneva, as they
understood French, from their situation on
the borders of France, and their relations
with Evangelical brethren in the Val Louise,
the Val Cluson, and the Val Pragela.

French was used in their churches and
families from that time forward, and is even
yet as familiar to them as the Italian. But
their language before the pest, and that now
used in all their schools and colleges was
and is Italian, and their missionary preachers
established in all parts of the peninsula, speak
the purest Tuscan, learned at the theological
college in Florence.

Language changed in 1630 103

The pest, which thus introduced a foreign
language into the pulpits of the valleys, was
preceded by two years of unexampled misfor-
tunes. Terrible storms on the mountains,
and inundations of entire villages, cold winds
which destroyed the last hope of the chestnut
harvest, and unusual rains that ruined the
grapes, reduced these poor Christians to pov-
erty. The elements seemed preparing the
way for that dreadful scourge which soon after
swept over the valleys.

The pastors, fifteen in number, met in
September, 1629, in fraternal union, for the
last time on earth. Famine threatened the
land, and they were constantly harassed by
priests and friars. A French army, sent by
Cardinal Richelieu, under the command of
three marshals of France, invaded Piedmont,
carrying the pest with it. Soon there were
deaths in the valley of Perosa, and before
long every town, hamlet, and farmhouse in
Luserna and San Martino was filled with the
dying and the dead. The pastors recom-
mended to the afflicted people prayer, repent-
ance, conversion, and would have ordered a
general fast if the unsettled state of the
country had not forbidden it.

Luserna and Perosa were continually

104 The Italian Waldenses

troubled by the passage of large armies be-
tween France and Piedmont, bringing with
them the contagion. The pest broke out in
May, and in less than a month one hundred
persons had died.

Pastor Gros of Saint John, and Pastor
Bernard of Perosa, each fifty years of age,
died at the same hour, near sunset, on July
ioth. Bernardin Jajuet, forty years old, pas-
tor of San Martino, died on the twelfth of the
same month. On the 19th the pastors of the
valley of Luserna met in the church of La
Torre, and gave Pastor Appie of Angrogna
charge of the church of Saint John, vacant by
the death of Joseph Gros. But the very next
day Pastor Appie was seized with the disease,
and died in four days, at the age of forty-five.
Seven more pastors, and many of the prin-
cipal laymen died in the month of August.
These pastors were James and Barnabas Gay,
father and son, the one sixty years of age, and
the other twenty-eight ; John Bruneral of Rora,
aged forty-three; Laurens Joli, forty-five;
Joseph Chanforan, fifty-six; John Vignaux of
Villar, fifty-eight, and David Javel, fifty.
The surviving pastors met on the heights of
the mountain of Angrogna, near Pramol, on
account of its distance from infected places,

Language changed in 1630 105

and its vicinity to the three valleys, to divide
the charge of the desolated churches; and
Daniel Rozel of Bobi was sent to Geneva to
ask help from the ministers there, and con-
duct young Samuel Gilles, son of the pastor
of La Torre, as a student of theology. But
these messengers, one thirty, and the other
nineteen years of age, were both stricken with
the malady during the month of September,
and before they had set out upon their jour-
ney. At the beginning of October, besides
Minister Bonjour, who was an invalid and had
retired after fifty years' service, there were
only three pastors left, one for each valley.
These were Valere Gros for Saint Martin,
John Barthelemi for Perosa, and Peter Gilles
for Luserna.

They met at Angrogna with twenty-five
lay delegates to divide again the care of the
churches and make another appeal for pas-
toral aid to their brethren in Dauphiny and
Switzerland. But the scourge had not yet
done its work, for one of these three remain-
ing pastors, who seemed to have been spared
by a special Providence to represent the
afflicted valleys, John Barthelemi, died at
the age of thirty-two. Anthony Leger was
then recalled from Constantinople, where he

106 The Italian Waldenses

had been acting as minister to the ambassador
of the Low Countries, and Monsieur Brunet
came from Geneva, while the pest was still
raging, bearing the assurance that in the
spring other Swiss ministers would follow
him.

Peter Gilles of Luserna at last, with the
exception of Valere Gros, remained alone, of
all the pastors of the valleys, having lost his
four eldest sons from the pest. But God gave
him strength to bear this accumulated burden
of grief and of labor. He went to all the
parishes, preaching twice or three times on
Sunday, and at least once every day of the
week, visiting the sick and consoling the
afflicted. Calm and courageous in the midst
of the dying, he communicated to them his
own unshaken confidence in God. " I passed, "
he says, " in the midst of the afflicted villages,
which everywhere showed signs of death and
mourning. Ubique Indus, ubique pavor et
plurima mortis imago " (" Grief and fear
everywhere, and many images of death ").
This is the only Latin quotation in all his
numerous writings, at a period when other
writers constantly used them. The people
thronged to his preaching in the open fields,
which seemed to them safer from infection

Language changed in 1630 107

than the churches, and "were filled with
praise and thanksgiving at the marvellous
help their Heavenly Father gave them in
the midst of such distress." The heat of the
summer that year was extraordinary. The
army of Richelieu pillaged houses and towns,
and there were conflicts between the soldiers
and the inhabitants. Before La Torre was
invaded by the pestilence the generals and
officers of the French army retreated there
for safety, and to have the services of some
good physicians and apothecaries. This also
increased the woes of the inhabitants, and
gave more victims to the disease when it
broke out there. Rent, food, and medicines
became very dear; the sick were not cared
for ; many of the dead were not buried ; the
fruits of the trees fell to the ground, and lay
rotting there ungathered ; the fields were not
harvested, and the mills even were so infected
that the people were afraid to use them.

Public affairs were in disorder, as all the
men in authority were dead, as well as nearly
all the surgeons and apothecaries. One or
two of the surviving physicians, who Gilles
is careful to say were not natives of the val-
leys, asked exorbitant prices for the simplest
services. The interment of the dead cost so

108 The Italian Waldenses

much that many before dying gave all their
possessions for the promise of burial, and
houses containing several corpses were burned
down, as the easiest way of disposing of them.

Many houses and farms were abandoned,
owing to the death of owners and cultivators.
The highways were filled with dead bodies,
and the breath of the desert seemed to have
passed over all the towns, once so active and
happy. Famine, pestilence, and war all to-
gether afflicted the Waldenses, and not even
then were they free from the persecutions of
the priests.

Twelve thousand inhabitants of the val-
leys died, and a great uncounted number of
strangers who had retreated to these high
regions for refuge.

At the close of the following year, when the
pest ceased, the survivors began to reorganize
their affairs, and put their houses in order.

At La Torre alone fifty families were
extinct. Many large families were reduced
to two or three persons; children were left
without parents, and parents without children.
An extraordinary number of marriages fol-
lowed ; the orphans were adopted by those
bereft of their own children, and the churches
were reorganized. "The History of the

Language changed in 1630 109

Waldenses, " by Peter Gilles, in two volumes,
written with charming simplicity and truth,
is a guide to all historians up to the year
1643. He began to write it before the pest,
in Italian, but changed it to French after the
Swiss pastors introduced that language.

The preface to his work, written when he
was seventy-two years old, is addressed to
all the pastors, elders, deacons, and members
of the churches in the valleys of Piedmont and
the neighboring valleys. "You know," he
writes, " in part, how and by whom I was
charged to collect the history of our churches,
and with what care I have done it. I now
present it to you, not in our common Italian
language, as I began it, but in this, for the
reason already known."

This fact of the sudden change of language
from Italian to French, is confirmed by a
later historian, Alexis Muston, who says,
"Although the Italian language had been
used until the arrival of the Swiss pastors in
the preaching and teaching of the Waldenses,
the French was then substituted, and Gilles
translated his work, already begun in Italian,
into French. From this period date the rela-
tions between the churches of the valleys and
Geneva."

no The Italian Waldenses

Thus is refuted the reproach often made to
the Waldenses in their missionary efforts in
Italy since 1848, — that they are French and
not native Italians.

More than once, with Piedmont, they passed,
by conquest, for a time, under French rule;
but they are and always have been strictly
Italian in sentiment, and also in language,
except from the consequences of the pest in
1630.

CHAPTER XV

HEROES

Even in a nation of heroes like the Waldenses,
some names stand out more conspicuously
than the rest. These are Janavel, Jahier,
and Arnaud, whose deeds rival those of any
modern heroes. Janavel and Jahier, in 1655,
defied the troops of Pianezza, and, with a few
men, defended the mountain passes against
large armies. With six against six hundred,
Janavel, then known only as the Captain of
the Vineyards of Luserna, protected his native
town, Rora, and drove back the enemy with-
out revealing the smallness of his own force.
With sixteen men, six armed with guns and
ten with slings, he repulsed the second attack,
made by a battalion of the enemy. The vigor
and intrepidity of his pursuit struck terror
into the hearts of the enemy, who fled towards
Luserna, without knowing the number of the
Waldenses, nor how many of their own they
left dead behind. Years after, in old age

ii2 The Italian Waldenses

and exile, at Geneva, Janavel said, " We were
few, but the stones from the slings of those
ten boys, too young to carry guns, were effec-
tive on the retreating enemy. " When a third
attack, with superior force, was made on Rora,
Janavel witnessed, at a distance, the burning
and sacking of the town, and then, with an
ardent prayer to the God of armies, led his
little troop of seventeen men to a place where
he almost destroyed the enemy, embarrassed
as they were by the booty, and the flocks and
herds taken at Rora. Returning to the Pian
Pra, — a level plain on the mountains, —
Janavel, with his men, knelt on the grass and
prayed, " O God, we bless Thee for our pre-
servation. Protect us in these calamities and
increase our faith." Ten thousand men, at
last, were sent by Pianezza to destroy Rora, a
village of fifty houses, and vanquish the heroic
defender. Janavel' s wife and daughters were
taken prisoners ; he was threatened with their
death and his own if he should be taken. " I
prefer the most cruel torments to abjuring
my faith," he answered. "As to my wife and
daughters, they know whether they are dear
to me. But God alone is master of their
lives, and if you kill their bodies He will save
their souls." Janavel united with Captain

Heroes 113

Jahier, a lion-like mountaineer, worthy to
be his companion in these courageous deeds.
Together they attacked the town of San
Secondo, and taught the persecutors to fear
them. They pushed hogsheads full of hay
before them to the walls of the town, by which
they were protected from the hail of balls,
and set fire to faggots they had brought with
them, making such a smoke that they were
concealed from the enemy. In this attack
they killed eleven hundred of the enemy, and
lost only seven men. Fighting thus against
superior numbers, crowded between a preci-
pice and a regiment of enemies, throwing
avalanches of stones on their persecutors, and
always beginning a battle with prayer, the
Waldenses fought all that year with Janavel
at their head. He was shot through and
through in one of these skirmishes, but, after
six weeks, recovered, Jahier taking the com-
mand in his absence. The last advice he
gave to Jahier as he was carried away faint-
ing and bleeding was to do no more that day
on account of the fatigue of the men, who had
had nothing to eat until late. But Jahier was
tempted by the promise of an easy victory into
an ambush, and there lost his life, although
no Greek or Roman hero ever sold it more
8

ii4 The Italian Waldenses

dearly. He killed the traitor who had be-
trayed him, invoked the aid of God, threw
himself on the cavalry of Savoy, killed three
officers, and, after making terrible havoc
around him, at last fell dying to the ground
from his numerous wounds. "He showed,"
says Leger, "great zeal for God and the ser-
vice of his country, and had the courage of a
lion as well as the humility of a lamb, giving
the glory of all his victories to God. He was
versed in the sacred Scriptures, intelligent,
accomplished, and only wanting in prudence
to moderate his courage." On the same day
the Waldenses thus lost the services of both
Janavel and Jahier; but brave lieutenants
remained, and many officers from other coun-
tries came to offer their services and sympathy
to the oppressed people.

Janavel lived in exile after peace was
restored, and aided Henri Arnaud to plan
the " Glorious Return " from Switzerland to
the valleys in 1689. Arnaud, although not a
native of the valleys, had, long before accom-
plishing this wonderful military deed, united
his fortunes with those of the Waldenses.
The grandeur of his character appears in every
act of that time. He knelt in the forest of
Prangins on the banks of Lake Leman, invok-

Heroes 115

ing the blessing of God on the perilous expe-
dition. He led the nine hundred heroes, after
crossing the lake at its narrowest point, away
from the chief roads in Savoy, to avoid the
French troops sent to arrest their progress,
remounting to the sources of the rivers, never
approaching large towns, following the crests
of the snowy mountains from precipice to
precipice, and reaching at last the beloved
land.

Arnaud, at the beginning of the expedi-
tion, was not its chosen leader, but only one
of the three pastors who were to counsel the
General Turrel. But Turrel, on the seventh
day, was killed, after having shown that he
had lost faith in the enterprise. Arnaud
then became the chief, and his name, to-
gether with that of Janavel, who planned it, is
now inseparably connected with the "Glori-
ous Return."

Courage similar to this was shown by the
men of Saluzzo, a colony of the Waldenses
which was afterwards destroyed. Churches,
called the "synagogues of heretics," in 15 10,
ten years before the Reformation in Germany,
were destroyed, men were burned at the stake,
and the rest of the population took refuge
with their brethren in Luserna, where they

n6 The Italian Waldenses

remained as guests five years. Weary at
length of trespassing on the hospitality of
these poor mountaineers, the Vaudois of
Saluzzo met in the valley of Rora, at night,
descended into the valley of the Po, and took
possession again of their homes. Five Vaudois
only fell in this expedition, when they struck
terror into the hearts of the despoilers of their
homes and lands, drove them out by force of
arms, and re-established the faith of their
ancestors.

Their skill and courage in dispute was not
less than their heroism in battle or their
patience in exile. Three of the principal
men of the valley of Perosa were ordered to
go to Turin by the Duke of Savoy, in 1602,
at the instigation of the Archbishop. On
their arrival, they were told that the Duke,
" having heard in what high esteem they were
held in Perosa, wished them to embrace his
religion, so that on their return they might
influence others. " The three heroes answered
that "for the great affection they had for the
Duke they would have yielded any point
regarding the concerns of this world, but as
to their religion, which they knew to be true,
they would not leave it, and they prayed his
Highness not to press them further on this

Heroes 117

point. " At this response the Governor poured
forth a torrent of abuse, threatening them
with the indignation of his Highness and
confiscation of their goods. Not long after,
an order was published to all the inhabitants
of Luserna and the vicinity to become Roman
Catholics or leave the place in five days under
pain of death and confiscation.

The Duke of Savoy himself was lenient,
but, pressed by the Pope and the priests, was
helpless to aid them. A new order was issued
to those who had not left, to go in two days,
unless they could obtain a special permission
to remain from the Archbishop, which meant
abjuration. Sure of their faith, but not ready
with their Bible references, these poor people
replied, " We cannot dispute with you, but if
you send to our pastor and prove to him that
the mass and your other ceremonies are not
contrary to the Word of God, we will go to
the mass." The Archbishop, believing him-
self sure of the victory, sent a safe-conduct
to Pastor Augustus Gros, who, a convert to
Protestantism, had been an Augustine monk
at Villafranca. But Pastor Gros, remember-
ing that no faith was to be kept with heretics,
refused to accept it, and invited the Jesuit to
Saint John. The conferences which were to

n8 The Italian Waldenses

convert the people to Papism began, at length,
with the subject, "The mass was instituted
by Jesus Christ, and is found in the sacred
Scriptures."

Pastor Gros refuted all the arguments of
the Jesuit, proved that the mass was nowhere
mentioned in the Bible, and at last, to the
confusion of his Jesuit adversary, said, " I
promise to go myself to mass, and exhort my
people to do the same if you will reduce it to
the simple form in which the communion was
instituted by Christ." These disputes were
constantly held in all parts of the valleys,
the pastors and teachers always putting the
enemy to flight with argument, as the people
did the armies with their slings and stones.

Some of these unfortunate mountaineers,
so often disturbed, deprived of their goods,
spirited away to far-off prisons and never
more heard of, tortured in mind, body, and
estate, and banished from their homes,
gathered in a band in the mountains, and
proclaimed themselves defenders of the op-
pressed. But as on the mountains there was
no food, they were often obliged to make
incursions to the plain, living by pillage, and
creating reprehensible disorders. They were
called the "Banished," and the "Digiunati,"

H

eroes

or "Fasters," and they constrained many of
the apostate Protestants to return to their
faith. This system of pillage, habitual with
the Roman Catholics, was only once prac-
tised by the Protestants, except in legitimate
defence of their homes, and it was then uni-
versally condemned.

Patient and uncomplaining, they often
accepted exile and poverty as the least of
the evils that encompassed them. Rather
than accept the mass, which was worse than
death, they " left their beautiful abodes, round
which the vine hung its clustering fruit; left
the shade of their chestnut groves, the hearths
of their forefathers, the temples of their God,
and, headed by their pastor, went forth, the
mother with her children, the father bearing
on his shoulders the household articles of
most value and utility, unless, as was often
the case, these were left behind, to take,
instead, a more cherished freight, — some
aged parent or helpless invalid."

CHAPTER XVI

MARTYRS

Every town and city of Piedmont has wit-
nessed the martyrdom of some Waldensian.
Every rock in the valleys is a monument of
some death ; every field has seen the martyrs
tortured ; every village has rendered its quota
to the glorious phalanx, whose names are
written in the Book of Life. Unheard-of
tortures were invented for them, but their
courage rose according to their need. The
announcement of death was received as the
entrance to life, and the martyr often bounded
with joy on to the funeral pile that would
soon reduce his mortal body to ashes. No
books could be large enough to contain all of
these touching stories, but some accounts of
the later persecutions have been preserved.
The barbe, Martin Gonin, of Angrogna,
thirty-six years old, was sent by the Synod,
in 1536, to Geneva, to confer with the Swiss
pastors on ecclesiastical affairs. Returning

Martyrs 12 1

through Dauphiny, he was arrested as a spy,
there being war at that time between the
King of France and the Duke of Savoy, and
taken to Grenoble, where the Parliament recog-
nized his innocence and ordered his libera-
tion. But the jailer, having searched him in
the night, found on his person some letters
from Farel and other Protestants, and arrested
him the next day on the new charge of heresy.
He was examined regarding his faith, which
he openly confessed, and was then condemned
to be strangled and thrown into the Iser.
This barbarous decree was executed at night,
in order that his persuasive speech and gentle
manners should not influence the spectators.
Near the same time, Catelan Girardet, of
San Giovanni, in Luserna, was condemned to
the stake, which he endured with admirable
fortitude. Before dying, he took two stones,
and struck them together, saying, "You can
no more, by your persecutions, destroy our
Church than I can crush these stones with my
hands." Twelve men of Luserna were at one
time condemned to the stake, but were liber-
ated by the people of Angrogna. At another
time five together were burned alive, making
a good confession of their faith. Sometimes
the proposed victims, even when taken in the

122 The Italian Waldenses

traps of their enemies, escaped, and spent
long years of usefulness afterwards among
their friends.

Pastor Gilles, returning from his last jour-
ney to Calabria, passed by Venice and Switz-
erland, taking with him from Lausanne a
young man named Noel. In their inn they
were accosted by some soldiers, who evi-
dently suspected them of being heretics, and
asked where they came from, where they
were going, and why they were travelling
thus together, a small weak man and a large
robust one. Gilles answered that he was a
Piedmontese, that he had been to exercise
his profession in the kingdom of Naples,
and that he was returning to Piedmont. He
and Noel succeeded, with the aid of the
tavern-keeper, in escaping that night, and,
passing over by-roads in the woods and on
the mountains, reached Luserna in safety.
Many others held firm in the midst of tortures
and at the hour of death. Even the judges
sometimes implored the martyrs to save their
lives by yielding, adding that they them-
selves desired a reform in the Church, but
not out of it. But, like Saint Paul, the
Waldenses boldly preached Christ and Him
crucified, and often drew tears from the eyes

Martyrs 123

of those who condemned them to an awful
death. This serene strength of soul, superior
to the ancient Stoicism, upheld them at the
supreme hour. They accepted martyrdom like
any other service for God. "Lord God,
Father Eternal and Omnipotent, we confess,
before Thy divine majesty, that we are miser-
able sinners, incapable of any good. Have
pity upon us, Holy God, Father of Mercy,
and pardon our sins, for the love of Jesus
Christ, Thy Son, our only Redeemer." This
prayer, so often on the lips of dying martyrs,
is still used in the service of the Waldensians
of the valleys as well as in those of Rome,
Florence, Naples, Venice, Turin, Milan,
and the other cities, where they now have
churches.

Geoffray Varaglia, the son of one of the
persecutors sent to the Waldensian valleys
by Innocent VIII., became pastor of the very
town that his father had laid waste. His
story is one of the most touching in all the
history of the Waldenses. He was born at
the Piedmontese town of Busca, entered the
Roman Catholic priesthood in 1522, and,
having remarkable intelligence and great elo-
quence, attracted the attention of his supe-
riors. He was selected to study and refute

124 The Italian Waldenses

the doctrines of the Reformation, the same
as those of the ancient Waldenses, which had
taken new life at the Synod of Angrogna, when
Farel and other reformers were present. With
one companion and ten assistants, Varaglia
was ordered to go over the cities of Italy to
raise the credit of the Roman Church by his
eloquent preaching. But these twelve men
were all soon convinced of the truth of the
doctrines they were called to refute, and were
imprisoned in Rome five years, their new
faith by this long seclusion growing daily
stronger. When Varaglia was at length re-
leased, he attached himself to the legation of
the Papacy in Paris ; but the voice of con-
science and the horror excited in his mind by
the persecutions in Provence induced him to
quit his lucrative position, and go to Geneva
to study the new theology. At fifty years
of age Varaglia began his pastorate at San
Giovanni of Luserna, filled with an ardor that
he had not felt in his youth. Returning from
a visit to Busca, his native town, he was spied
and taken prisoner to Turin, and, after trial
and condemnation, led to the stake in the
square of the castle of that city. When he
heard the decree he said quietly to the
judges, "Be sure, my lords, that you will

Martyrs 125

need wood for the funeral piles sooner than
Evangelical ministers to burn on them, for
these increase in numbers day by day, and
the word of God endures forever." After
Varaglia had mounted the pile, the execu-
tioner approached and knelt before him, to
ask forgiveness for putting him to death. " I
pardon not only you," said the martyr, "but
all the others who have caused it. "

An old man, who had already suffered much
for the truth, was led to Varaglia' s place of
martyrdom, and, after being made to witness
it, was whipped, and then branded with red-
hot irons heated at the fire which had reduced
the strangled body of his friend to ashes.

Nicholas Sartoris, twenty-six years of age,
a native of the valleys, who had studied at
Lausanne, was present at Aosta when a priest
said that the sacrifice of Christ was renewed
every day in the mass. "Christ died but
once," murmured Sartoris, "and is now in
heaven." For this he was imprisoned, tor-
tured, and at last burned at Aosta, May 4,
1557, courageously refusing to purchase life
at the cost of abjuration. The cruelty of
their enemies was sometimes foiled when
everything was ready for the execution.
Several of " the religion," condemned to death,

126 The Italian Waldenses

were saved by a heavy fall of snow and rain,
which prevented the wood from burning,
and during the night were enabled to escape
to their friends, glorifying God for their
deliverance.

A pastor, named Jacob, who was bound to
the stake with his mouth gagged so that he
should not speak to the bystanders, so moved
his judges by the expression of resignation
and strength upon his countenance that one
of them resolved never again to take part in
such proceedings ; and another, the Count of
Racconis, from that time no longer a perse-
cutor, sought in every way to befriend this
afflicted people. The speechless death of this
martyr was thus more useful to his friends
than a victory on the battlefield.

The Abbey of Pinerolo, founded by the
Countess Adelaide, of Morienne, in the year
606, was inhabited by rich monks, who were
mortal enemies of the Protestants of the
valley of Perosa, which touches Pinerolo.
They hired about three hundred desperadoes,
and sent them frequently into the valley to
burn, destroy, and practise every kind of
cruelty and brigandage on helpless men and
women. These raids were often made upon
the town of Saint Germain, only three miles

Martyrs 127

distant, and the victims were dragged to
Pinerolo, and imprisoned in the dungeons of
the abbey until the judges found time to con-
demn them to fire or to the galleys. The
pastor of Saint Germain, hearing one night
a voice that he knew calling him, went out of
his house, and found himself betrayed into
the hands of these marauders, who had accom-
panied the traitor to make him prisoner.
Several men of Saint Germain, who ran to
his aid, were either killed, wounded, or taken
prisoner; the houses were sacked, and the
minister, together with some women, dragged
to the abbey. The minister, after resisting
all efforts to make him retract, was burned at
a slow fire, the faggots of which were brought
by the poor reluctant women, his parishioners.
Preaching monks were often sent into towns
to urge persecutions, and it is recorded that
one of these, during a mild winter, proclaimed
that God meant to save the wood so that more
heretics might be burned.

The martyrs and sufferers were not all
of humble condition, or even pastors and
teachers. Many of the nobles of Luserna
and of the plain of Piedmont accepted the
pure religion of the Waldenses, and in times
of persecution retired to the valleys for pro-

128 The Italian Waldenses

tection and sympathy. The noble family of
Villanova Sollaro, consisting of six brothers,
resisted all efforts to make them apostatize.
"Let his Highness," said they, "ask of us
any sacrifice but that of our faith;" but as
the Duke of Savoy was determined not to
have "two religions" in his kingdom, they
hastily sold part of their possessions and
retired into the marquisate of Saluzzo, then
owned by France. The record of their five
years of trouble and domestic agitation, always
wandering between Saluzzo and Piedmont,
has been preserved. They were at length
cited to appear before the Senate of Turin
with other persons of high degree, culpa-
ble, like them, of being Protestants — were
condemned and banished, their wealth con-
fiscated, and the members of the family
dispersed. One of the brothers retired to
the valley of Luserna, where his family
existed for more than a century. The record
of the martyrs might be continued, but this is
enough to prove their courage, their patience,
and humility.

Another list might be made of the unhappy
apostates, who, to save their lives and fortunes,
denied the convictions of their hearts, and
dragged out for years miserable lives, leav-

Martyrs 129

ing the inheritance of a false and cruel
religion to their posterity. But the saintly
courage of the martyrs was not possessed by
all. Perhaps even on the families of the
apostates a blessing rested, for the sake of
ancient martyred ancestors, that afterwards
blossomed in all Piedmont into the flower of
Liberty.

CHAPTER XVII

WOMEN

Many women courageously shared in the per-
secutions suffered by their people, and gave
up their lives at the stake or on the wheel.
Some noble ladies of Piedmont and Dauphiny
openly professed the evangelical faith, and
protected the oppressed, even at the loss of
all their possessions. Others, of royal line-
age or of noble birth, were distinguished for
their cruelty and bigotry. The most con-
spicuous of these persecutors were Yolande,
sister of Louis XL of France, and wife of
Amedeus IX., Duke of Savoy, who, in 1476,
issued an edict ordering all the inhabitants
of Pinerolo, Cavour, and Luserna to become
Roman Catholics; and Maria Cristina of
France, regent for her two sons, and gen-
erally called Madame Royale. In the per-
secution of 1655 this royal lady of the houses
of France and of Savoy tried to prevent the
remnant of the massacred population from

Women 131

taking refuge in the valleys of France after
climbing the precipices and crossing the snow
and ice of the mountains. She wrote to the
court of France, urging Mazarin to send them
back to her that they might be massacred,
but he refused her tiger-like request, saying
that humanity compelled him to give an
asylum to the fugitive Waldenses. Marguerite
de Foix, widow of the Marquis of Saluzzo,
who was the slave of her confessor, became
in his hands, in 1499, an instrument of perse-
cution. Being a relative of Pope Julius II.,
she had a bishopric on her marquisate, and at
the suggestion of the priests, by whom she
was surrounded, issued a decree by which all
the Protestants on her lands should leave or
be put to death. She drove most of her
unhappy subjects out; imprisoned, tortured,
and killed those who remained, afterwards
taking possession of their houses and lands.
Most of the fugitives took refuge in the valley
of Luserna in the towns of Angrogna, Rora,
and Bobi, remaining there as guests five
years, and sending frequent petitions to the
Marchioness of Saluzzo for permission to
return to their homes, all of which she
refused. The situation became at length
unbearable, and they took by force what was

132 The Italian Waldenses

refused them in justice, losing only five men
in the conflict.

In contrast to this, Blanche, widow of the
Count of Luserna and lord of Angrogna, sympa-
thized with her persecuted subjects in the inva-
sion made by Commissioner Bersour, in the year
1535. She reproached him for the cruelties
practised upon them, and for the want of re-
spect to her and to the memory of her husband.

The saintly patience of the martyrs and of
the tortured, brought to the castle where
Bersour committed his cruelties, so moved
the heart of one of his sons, Louis Bersour,
and of his wife, Cristine Farine, that they
became Protestants, and suffered great losses
with the people of God. Their son, Paul
Bersour, a learned and pious physician, lived
in the valley of Luserna, and left a family
which long preserved his name and that of
their ancestor, the great persecutor of the
church. Leonora, daughter of the Count of
Luserna, and the wife of Valentine Boulle,
who long faithfully resisted the persuasions
and threats of the Duke of Savoy, was not less
resolute than her husband in attachment to the
religion she had adopted. Subjected to con-
tinual annoyances, they at last retired to Bobi,
hoping there to escape further persecution.

Women 133

The Protestant Countesses of Luserna often,
in times of severe persecution, used their
influence to protect the persecuted, — or, if
Papists, tried to persuade them to abandon
their religion, and thus save their lives and
fortunes. But the best friend they had among
these titled women was Marguerite of Valois,
sister of Henry II. of France, and wife of
Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy. She
had learned to admire the Protestant religion
from her paternal aunt, Margaret of Navarre,
and also from her maternal aunt, Ren£e,
Duchess of Este, daughter of Louis XII. of
France, both of whom were Protestants.

Like them, she protected the persecuted
when she could, but the persistence of the
Pope, priests, and friars was such that she
was powerless to help them when the Duke
was obliged to issue an edict of persecution.
One of the touching epistles directed to her
by the pastors of the little Alpine flock is
preserved by the historian, Gilles. "Your
Grace," it says, " is not ignorant of the beau-
tiful examples of those good women, Deborah,
Esther, and Judith, who, in positions like
yours, spared not their own lives, and the
Lord did great things for them in delivering
his poor people, and gave them great glory

134 The Italian Waldenses

and honor not only on earth but in heaven.
Madame, this good God calls you to receive
the honors of these women. Will you permit
the Lord Jesus to be driven from your king-
dom, and that the land where you live and
have so much power should be bathed in his
blood before your eyes ? " The long letter of
which this is a part is signed by " The poor
and humble subjects, the inhabitants of the
valleys of Luserna, Angrogna, Perosa, and
San Martino, and all those of the plain who
invoke only the name of the Lord Jesus."
During all her reign as wife of Emanuel
Philibert, she presented their petitions to
the Duke, received their deputations, sym-
pathized with them in their sufferings, and
when they were imprisoned sent them food
from her own table.

Pastor Noel, who was sent to the court to
obtain her intercession, writes thus of her to
his brethren, the ministers of Luserna: "I
have seen Madame the Princess, and thanked
her for all the pain and labor she takes for
us, and for the favors that she, through God,
has obtained for us. I cannot tell you of all
the kindness and affection this virtuous lady
has shown us." Some of her letters to her
" Dear and well-beloved friends " are pre-

Women

35

served, and prove the care she had for their
interests, and her respect for liberty of con-
science, which, she said, "no one ought to
offend." She was deceived by the cruel
Governor Castrocaro, whom she placed over
her faithful Waldenses, believing his specious
promises of kindness to them. But they
never lost confidence in her, and lamented
her death, which occurred in the year 1574.
She continually exhorted the churches to obey
Castrocaro, and they, for the "great love
which they bore to their sovereign lady and
princess, who had so often befriended them,"
tried to please her, but suffered much from
his persecutions.

History recounts the martyrdom of many
women of the Piedmontese Alps. Some were
buried alive; some left wounded and starving
to die on the snow; some were cut to pieces,
and others put to death in modes too horrible
to describe. Camilla Guarini, the very day
that she was affianced to John Louis Pascal,
heard that he was appointed missionary pas-
tor to Calabria. It is uncertain whether they
married at Lausanne, previous to his depart-
ure, but she never saw him again, and her
heart was broken with grief for the tortures
he suffered at Cosenza, at Naples, at Rome

136 The Italian Waldenses

in the Torre di Nona, and finally at the stake
in Castel Sant' Angelo. The letters he wrote
to her at that time are models of affection and
courageous faith and hope. Another martyr,
before his fiery death, wrote to "Anne, his
faithful spouse, and well-beloved sister,"
praying her to remain true to the faith she
had adopted. " If the world and poverty
affright thy youth," he says, "marry again
some other man who fears God, and remem-
ber me only as a handful of dust. Trust in
God. Pray to Him, love Him and serve
Him, and He will never forsake thee."
Jeanne Mathurin of Carignano asked leave
of the persecutors to visit her husband in
prison, as she had something to say to him
"for his good." She was permitted to enter,
the Inquisitors believing that she intended to
persuade him to recant. But this courageous
daughter of the martyrs, fearing that her hus-
band might, from weakness or affection for
her, fail at the last hour, earnestly exhorted
him to persevere in his religion, and not
weigh the short life of this mortal body
against his eternal salvation. She was fiercely
insulted by the priests, who were transported
with fury at hearing language so different
from what they had anticipated, and, refusing

Women 137

to retract, she also was kept prisoner, and was
burned at the stake with her husband three
days after. "God be thanked," said this
heroic young woman to her husband, " He
united us on earth, and He will not separate
us in death. We shall meet in Heaven."
One of the most touching stories is that of
Octavia Sollaro, the daughter of one of the
six brothers of the noble family of the Sollaro,
who, to escape persecution in the plain of
Piedmont, took refuge in the valley of Luserna.
After long hesitation, she consented to marry
a rich and noble lord of Piedmont, who prom-
ised to respect her religion. But he proved
faithless to his word, denied her liberty to
make any public profession of her faith, and
deprived her of the Bible and other religious
books. Octavia Sollaro, although restored to
the wealth and titles of her ancestors, pined
away, from this constant friction with the will
of her husband and from the reproaches of her
own conscience. When some good women of
the valleys went to visit her, and "hoped that
God would soon restore her to health," she
answered, sadly, " No, do not ask God for
that, but pray rather with me, that He will
take me out of this life while I yet love his
truth, and while the little light that remains

138 The Italian Waldenses

to me is mine," and soon after died. Gilles,
who relates this story in few and austere words,
adds, "I tell this, so that others may profit
by it on similar occasions." The wife of a
man who, in conversation with some Papists,
said "he thanked God that the Duke was
more moderate and merciful than they "
— because when he refused to recant they
imprisoned him — went to Turin, threw her-
self at the feet of the Duke, explained her
husband's words as a compliment instead of
a reproach, and saved him from the jaws of
the lion. Sometimes man and wife who were
more nearly related than the papal Church
arbitrarily allowed, were separated, the hus-
band sent to the galleys, and the wife pub-
licly whipped. A woman who was accused of
preaching, "dressed in a great black robe,"
was put five times to "the question," in pres-
ence of the clerical and civil authorities of the
place. Two beautiful girls were stolen —
taken in a carriage to Turin, and never heard
of more. Maidens threw themselves from
precipices to escape dishonor; mothers pierced
their own bosoms with a sword, and then
handed the weapon to their daughters with a
smile, and "It does not hurt." The grand-
daughter of a man one hundred and three

Women 139

years old gave him milk in times of starva-
tion in the caverns, from her own breast, and,
when he was killed before her eyes, leaped
off a rock to escape the ruffians.

When their husbands and fathers and
friends and lovers were fighting, the women
retired to the caverns on the mountain heights
to pray. The victory was often given in
answer to their prayers. But once these
women heard their friends from the valley
of Cluson, who had come to aid, returning
discouraged from the battles, say, " What will
you do, poor women? Your husbands are all
dead."

Margaret, the sister of the hero, Janavel,
received a shot in her bosom when nursing
her infant, and was killed soon after by a
second shot. The babe was found three days
after, alive, in her stiffened embrace. She
was one of one hundred and ninety-six per-
sons killed in their retreats in the mountain
caverns at the time of Pianezza's invasion.
The bones of these heroic women whitened
"on the Alpine mountains cold," but they
wear the martyr's crown of glory, and their
stories are left to touch every noble and
sympathetic heart.

CHAPTER XVIII

FRIENDS GENERAL BECKWITH

Many persons in the ranks of their enemies
were struck with horror at the persecutions
suffered by the Waldenses, and defended their
cause with such earnestness that they them-
selves fell under the ban of Rome. A doctor
of theology, who had signed many of the
processes which condemned the so-called
heretics to death, declared, " before God, that
he had no peace of conscience since," and was
driven from the assembly, and pronounced
"more worthy of the flames than many who
had been condemned to them."

Cardinal Sadoleto, who was friendly to
the French Vaudois living near his posses-
sions in Provence, was called to Rome, where
he died shortly after, "quite suddenly, after
receiving the sacrament." The Dukes of
Savoy, although all Roman Catholics, except
the excellent Margaret of France, were often
reluctant to persecute their subjects living in

Friends — General Beckwith 141

the valleys. To the disgrace of womanhood,
two women of the House of Savoy are known
to have persecuted with vigor, — Yolande of
France, and Cristina, called Madame Royale,
— both regents during the minority of their
sons. It is recorded of Carlo Emanuel, in
1 595, that he received the inhabitants of
Luserna in Villar, and in answer to their
expressions of fidelity said, "Be faithful to
me, and I will be a good prince and father to
you, and as to your liberty of conscience and
the exercise of your religion, I will do noth-
ing against them. If any one disturbs you
come to me and I will protect you."

Victor Amedeus II., in the next century,
after being forced by the Pope and the King
of France to persecute them, visited their
desolate land, and comforted them with kind
promises. The scene is famous in which he
took the gold chain from his neck to divide
among the starving peasants of the valleys.
The sympathy of the people of Switzerland
was shown by acts of abounding generosity.
Geneva is a name that to this day wakes a
thrill of grateful emotion in the heart of a
Waldensian. Cromwell was moved to the
depths of his strong heart by the news of the
massacre of 1655. Reordered a general fast,

142 The Italian Waldenses

gave two thousand pounds for the survivors,
and wrote letters of remonstrance to the Duke
of Savoy and to Louis XIV. The English
Ambassador, Sir Samuel Morland, who had
received the horrible details from Leger, one
of the persecuted, addressed the young Duke
in Latin, his bigoted mother being present.
Horrified by the accounts he had heard,
Morland relates them all in the very court of
the Duke. His blood boils with indignation,
and he says, " The angels are surprised with
horror! Heaven itself seems to be astonished
at the cries of dying men, and the very earth
to blush with the blood of so many innocent
persons." He then delivered a letter, also
in Latin, composed by Milton, from Oliver
Cromwell to the Duke, interceding for the
Waldenses. Cromwell threatened the Pope
to appear with English ships at the port of
Civita Vecchia, near Rome, if the massacres
were continued.

The famous sonnet of John Milton —

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie whitening on the Alpine mountains cold "

was written at this time. The Elector of
Saxony also remonstrated with another Duke
of Savoy for these cruelties practised on the

Friends — General Beckwith 143

men of the valleys of Italy. " Let your High-
ness know that there is a God in Heaven from
whom nothing is hid. Let your Highness
take care not voluntarily to make war upon
God, and not to persecute Christ in the per-
son of his members. The ashes of the martyrs
are the seed of the Church. The Christian
religion was established by persuasion, not
by violence." The "Glorious Return," in
1689, signalized the end of bloody persecu-
tion, but not of oppression and disabilities for
the Waldenses. They lived over a hundred
years, shut up in the valleys in poverty and
ignorance, their ancient faith almost forgotten.
Still the race was kept entire by the edicts of
1698 and 1730, which banished all persons of
foreign birth, and by the interdiction of mixed
marriages. In the year 1825 a religious re-
vival began to prepare the way for that exodus
which took place in 1848. A young French
officer of artillery, named Felix Neff, dedi-
cated himself to evangelization, first in the
high Alps of Dauphiny, and afterwards in the
Piedmontese Alps. But the work was diffi-
cult, as he said that the inhabitants had
degenerated morally as well as physically.
Many of the Waldenses, without having openly
changed their religion, were farther from the

144 The Italian Waldenses

faith of their fathers than if they had become
Roman Catholics.

The sublime and terrible aspect of the
French Alps, which served as a refuge for
the truth when nearly all the rest of the world
lay in darkness, — the deep caverns where the
Protestants met in secret to read the Holy
Scriptures, and adore the Eternal One in
spirit and in truth, impressed the soul of this
Evangelist. The year after, when he visited
the Italian Alps, he was equally impressed
with the natural scenery. "The beauty of
the vegetation in these valleys contrasts with
the aridity of the French Alps. The view of
these rocks and glaciers, the rich valleys
stretching away beneath your feet, and in the
distance the vast plains of Italy, lift the
thoughts to the Eternal Creator." The
spiritual character of Felix Neff influenced
the inhabitants of the Italian valleys. Prayer
meetings were held, and Christian zeal awoke
that showed itself in good works.

This awakening at home produced new
interest abroad in the children of the martyrs.
The Ambassador of Prussia collected money
from the Czar, Alexander I. of Russia; from
the Protestants in Rome, Turin, Genoa; in
Holland, England, Prussia, Switzerland, the

Friends — General Beckwith 145

Low Countries, and the United States, to build
a hospital at La Torre. The hearts of the
long-persecuted and neglected Waldenses over-
flowed with tenderness.

"This is the Lord's doing, and it is mar-
vellous in our eyes," they said. "How many
reasons we have to bless the Lord and to
redouble our efforts to merit such kindness."
A few years later another hospital was founded
in Val San Martino. Another friend came
to Italy in 1823, — the Rev. Dr. Gilly of
England, — whose book, " Narrative of an
excursion to the mountains of Piedmont and
researches among the Waldenses, — Protes-
tant inhabitants of the Cottian Alps," aroused
widespread interest in the subject, and in-
spired one generous heart to give five thou-
sand pounds sterling for the establishment of
Trinity College at La Torre. The reading
of this book also procured for the Waldenses
the most generous, the most enlightened, and
the most persevering of all their benefactors,
General Charles Beckwith, whose benefits to
the ancient Church of the Waldenses can
scarcely be exaggerated. It would be diffi-
cult to find another example of a rich and
cultured gentleman, in high position, who has
left his country to live with a poor and rough
10

146 The Italian Waldenses

population of Alpine peasantry, and for nearly-
one quarter of a century spent almost all of
his income, his time, strength, and talents
for their material and spiritual good. A can-
non ball at the battle of Waterloo took off
the leg of Beckwith, who was then an aide-
de-camp of the Duke of Wellington, and con-
strained him to retire from active service at
the age of twenty-six. The courage and
energy which had made him conspicuous in
the army were thenceforth all directed to the
aid of the small, lifeless Church which, for the
sake of the fathers, God meant to revive.

"Beckwith possessed all the best qualities
to command an army : promptness in devising
plans; coolness in danger; talent for organi-
zation and indomitable courage." But the
French ball at Waterloo cut off all his high
hopes of glory, and he was led to the Wald-
ensian valleys. "I was transported," he said,
" by the love of glory, but the good God said
to me, ' Halt ! ' and cut my leg off, and I
think I am much happier for it."

Since the emancipation of the Waldenses,
many friends in Scotland, England, and other
Protestant countries have aided their missions
in Italy by sympathy and contributions. But
none have collected as large sums, or aided

Friends — General Beckwith 147

as much in many ways as the Rev. Robert
Stewart, of Scotland, but who lived over thirty
years in Italy. A mural tablet in his honor,
with an appropriate inscription, is placed in
the entrance of the Waldensian Church, 107
Via Nazionale, in Rome.

CHAPTER XIX

EMANCIPATION IN 1 848

The hour of liberation from the woes of
centuries at last arrived. The religious
awakening in the valleys, fostered by General
Beckwith, prepared the way for the emanci-
pation from all their disabilities granted by
Charles Albert of the House of Savoy. Long
before the European revolutions of 1848 this
noble-hearted king had begun to loose the
fetters of his subjects. He softened the rigor
of ancient edicts by special decrees, and in
February, 1848, granted a liberal constitu-
tion, and emancipated the Waldenses. As
Grand Master of the order of Saints Maurice
and Lazarus, Charles Albert, in 1844, went
to La Torre to assist at the dedication of a
Roman Catholic church in honor of those
saints. Although this seemed an unfortunate
event, the benevolence of the sovereign and
the fidelity of the inhabitants of La Torre
made it the seal of affection and friendship

Emancipation in 1848 149

between them. The King sent back the
troops that were ready to accompany him
and were to be lodged at La Torre, saying,
" I have no need of a guard among the Wald-
enses." He then accepted the proposal of
the Marquis of Luserna and the Marquis of
Angrogna to be received by the militia of the
valleys. In silence he passed through their
ranks to the new church at the entrance of
the town, and on his return was greeted by
cries of joy and welcome from all the popu-
lation. Moved by this cordial reception, the
King, from the door of a palace at Luserna,
reviewed all the Vaudois companies, saluted
every banner of the different towns, and
smiled when an enthusiastic color-bearer, not
content with saluting the flag, also took off
his cap. He received the Tavola, or Board
of the Pastors, with distinguished honor, and
left a gift for the poor. On his way back to
Turin he saw bonfires, like a circle of fire,
burning on the topmost peaks of the moun-
tains, in token of the joy his visit had caused.
"I shall never forget," said Charles Albert,
" these tokens of affection, for they have shown
in the hearts of these Waldenses the same
devotion to the throne of Savoy which dis-
tinguished their ancestors." He erected at

150 The Italian Waldenses

the entrance of La Torre, in memory of this
visit, a small fountain, with the inscription,
"The King Charles Albert to the people
who welcomed him with so much affection
in 1844."

The decoration of the order of Saints
Maurice and Lazarus was afterwards sent to
General Beckwith, — the man who had been
called by a Roman Catholic bishop the
"wooden-legged adventurer," and had been
in danger several times of being expelled
from the country on account of his efforts to
educate the population. The darkness of
the night of centuries gradually disappeared
before the light. In 1847 Marquis Robert
D'Azeglio headed a petition signed by six
hundred other persons — professors, lawyers,
doctors, notaries, artists, and even priests —
for the civil and religious emancipation of the
Waldenses and of the Jews. Public opinion
in Piedmont was favorable to this progress of
liberty. At a patriotic banquet given in
Pinerolo, a lawyer said, " On these moun-
tains live twenty thousand of our brothers,
who are deprived of the rights of citizenship,
and yet they are as educated, as industrious,
as strong in arm and in heart as any other
Italians. It is our duty, as their nearest

Emancipation in 1848 151

neighbors, to lift our voices in their favor,
and cry, * Viva the Emancipation of the
Waldenses. ' " A similar banquet was soon
after held at Turin, when all present joined
in this cry of liberty and fraternity.

The Statute, or constitutional charter, was
granted by Charles Albert on the 8th of
February, 1848. But although the Waldenses
participated in the general enthusiasm, they
were as yet only tolerated, the ancient edicts
against them being still in force. Eight days
after, towards evening, when it was known
that the decree of their emancipation was
signed, thousands of the people of Turin
gathered under the windows of Pastor Bert's
house, and sang there a patriotic hymn, con-
tinuing these demonstrations of sympathy far
into the night. The edict, which noted "the
fidelity and good sentiments of the Wald-
ensian population," granted them "all the
civil and political rights of other subjects,
with liberty to frequent the schools and uni-
versities, and to take all academic honors."
Their religion and their private schools were
ordered to be respected, notwithstanding any
previous law against them. This edict created
great joy as soon as it was known in the
valleys. At La Torre there was a general

152 The Italian Waldenses

illumination in the evening; and next day,
called by the beating of the drums, nearly all
the people gathered, every company with its
banner, in and about the temple where Pastor
Meille celebrated divine service. The hymns
of joy sung in chorus, the solemn gratitude
of the people, the banners gathered in the
church, proved it a memorable occasion.
All day long, companies of the national guard
marched through the town singing patriotic
songs like —

" Con P azzura cocarda sul petto,
Con Italici palpiti in cuore,"

and crying, "Viva 1' Italia," "Viva la Co-
stituzione," "Viva Carlo Alberto."

Messengers were sent to all the mountain
towns and hamlets, and that night more than
one hundred fires on the heights were counted
from La Torre. At Pinerolo, that centre of
papal intolerance, from which, during many
centuries, bands of priests and friars and
persecutors of every sort had often gone out
to La Torre, eight miles away, not only the
few Waldenses who lived there, but all of the
Roman Catholic population illuminated their
houses for joy that a new era of peace and
brotherly love had come. At San Giovanni

Emancipation in 1848 153

the prior not only illuminated his house, but
had the chimes in the belfry ring the most
lively melodies. The national guards went
out in the country near San Giovanni to bear
the glad tidings to Joshua Meille, the vener-
able senior of the pastors. This good old
white-haired man went weeping from one to
the other, embracing all the young men, and
saying, "Viva la fratellanza." But all this
was nothing to the celebration at Turin on
Feb. 28. The deputation from the valleys
set out the day before, and was greeted all
along the thirty miles of the journey by cries
of "Long live our Waldensian brothers and
liberty of conscience." By the time they
reached Turin their number had increased to
several hundreds, all of whom were joyfully
received and lodged by the Turinese. Some
merchants even converted their stores into
dormitories for them. Early next morning the
deputation of six hundred, preceded by twelve
young Waldensian girls, dressed in white,
with blue sashes, and bearing small Italian
flags in their hands, met to take part in the
procession. They had a magnificent velvet
standard, with the royal arms embroidered
in silver, and the simple inscription, "The
grateful Waldenses to Charles Albert."

«54

The Italian Waldenses

Oppressed and persecuted as they had been,
they expected only to follow at the end of that
interminable procession, where thirty thou-
sand flags bent before Charles Albert. But
the Turinese made them go first. " You have
so long been the last," they said, "now you
shall go first " ; and the flowers thrown from
the balconies fell first on the white and blue
robed girls, children of the martyrs.

The delegates were embraced with tears;
their hands were pressed by strangers, and
even priests threw their arms about them as
they walked in the procession. Liberty and
Brotherly Love were the watchwords of that
day. It is impossible to describe the affec-
tion and enthusiasm of the time, as if the
Turinese would make amends for all the
sins of their ancestors and of the papal
Church.

"Dear brother," said an eye-witness, "who
would have thought that we should ever see
such wonders ? Who would have said that on
that same square of the Castle, where once
arose so many funeral piles for our martyrs,
where crowds drew near to view their suffer-
ings, a similar throng should welcome us with
such heartfelt cries of love and brotherhood ?
Oh! it is God who has done this. To Him

Emancipation in 1848 155

be glory and thanks. May He ever bless our
beautiful country."

From that memorable day the Waldenses,
no longer shut up in their valleys, have had
full liberty in Italy to teach the Gospel of
truth, which preserved them from destruction
amid so many and great perils and sorrows.
They carried with them the Bible, which had
been their light through all, that sacred Book
which their ancestors, in 1535, ten years after
the Reformation, gave a large sum from their
slender purses to have translated into French
by Olivetan, a kinsman of Calvin. On the
first page of this edition are the lines, "The
Waldenses, an Evangelical people, have made
this treasure public," and the frontispiece
is — "The Bible, which is all the Holy
Scripture, containing the Old Testament and
the New, translated into French, the Old
from the Hebrew and the New from the
Greek. God is All. Listen ye Heavens,
and thou, Earth, lend thine ear, for the
Eternal speaketh."

CHAPTER XX

A. D. 1889 — BI-CENTENARY OF " GLORIOUS
RETURN "

The Bi-centenary of the "Glorious Return,"
celebrated by the Waldenses in the year 1889,
was an event that called the attention of all
Italy. The valleys, where for three years,
from 1686 to 1689, no Bible was read, no
psalm sung, no prayer of their pure faith
raised to God, rang with joyful hymns of
praise. Pastors from every part of Italy met
at the Synod held at Torre Pellice, the capital
of the valleys. There also came represen-
tatives of the Huguenots of England and
America, of the Moravians, and of the
Evangelical churches of France, Sweden,
Holland, and Austria. A monument in
memory of the departure for their valleys in
Piedmont of Arnaud's nine hundred heroes
was dedicated at Prangins, on Lake Leman.
The inscription on it is this : " After three
years of sojourn in this hospitable land, the

SIEGE OF BALSIGLIA.
From an old print.

Bi-centenary of "Glorious Return" 157

Waldenses of Piedmont started from this spot
to return to their own land, Aug. 16, 1689.
The children of those heroes have erected
this monument Aug. 16, 1889." The morn-
ing ceremonies were followed by a banquet,
when the Italian Consul to Switzerland com-
pared this heroic deed to the struggle of the
Italian nation for liberty, from the defeat of
Novara to the breach of Porta Pia at Rome.
With great applause was sent to King Humbert
a telegram expressing the devotion of these
descendants of the persecuted Waldenses to
the liberal sovereign and faithful keeper of
the promises made to their forefathers.

Towards evening a small company of coura-
geous youths embarked on the placid waters
of Lake Leman, at Nyon, the narrowest
crossing, to follow for ten days, over the high
mountains of Savoy, the path taken by their
ancestors in far more difficult circumstances.
On Aug. 27, three thousand people gathered
on the mountain of Balsiglia, in the valley of
San Martino, where, two hundred years before,
the fugitives arrived, and were besieged for
six months by the army of their enemies, the
French, escaping only miraculously, under
cover of a fog, by creeping along the narrow
ledge of a precipice. On Sept. 1 there was

158 The Italian Waldenses

another reunion at Sibaud, where, Sept. 1,
1689, the returned exiles swore to combat the
Babylonian woe. In the year 1694 the edict
of restoration of the Waldenses to their homes
in the valleys, to freedom from bloody perse-
cutions, and to liberty of conscience, called
forth a fiery protest from Pope Innocent XII.
But the Senate of Turin prohibited the pub-
lication of this bull, and thus gave their first
resolute resistance to the papal power over the
Waldenses. Thus was inaugurated the era of
liberty of conscience, and this faithful people
began at last to enjoy the longed-for rest from
persecution. When will the other inhabitants
of Italy understand that because they trusted
in God they were delivered, and learn the
same undoubting faith which saved them?
Two hundred years ago these valleys were
deserted, and the few heroes who came back
from Switzerland were uncertain whether new
exile and new persecutions awaited them.
What a contrast to the liberty now enjoyed by
their descendants ! Benevolently considered
by their fellow-citizens in the Italian pen-
insula; the bi-centenary of the "Glorious
Return" treated as a national glory; reduced
railroad fare granted them in their journey to
the valleys, and the sympathy of the successor

WALDENSIAN RESIDENCE AND MUSEUM.

BADGES.

Bi-centenary of "Glorious Return" 159

of their ancient persecutors, they are now sat-
isfied. King Humbert gave also a contribu-
tion of five thousand francs to the Waldensian
House and College, built by them in com-
memoration of the bi-centenary. He has also
conferred the title of Commendatore of the
Crown of Italy on two pastors — Dr. Lantaret,
of the valleys, now deceased, and Dr. Matteo
Prochet, President of the Committee of Evan-
gelization; and of Cavaliere of the same order
on several others, and decorated Dr. Paolo
Geymonat, of Florence, with the title of
Cavaliere of the Order of Saints Maurice and
Lazarus. An eye-witness thus describes two
visits of King Humbert to the valleys :

" In the year 1892 there was to be a sham
fight of the troops in the Val San Martino,
and the King was expected. Thousands of
people were gathered on the hills and in the
trees to witness his arrival, and a pavilion
was erected at the place where he was to leave
his carriage. First on the line to receive the
King were one or two members of Parliament,
then four priests and fifteen mayors, and at
the end the Moderator of the Waldensian
Church and the President of the Committee
of Evangelization, the programme being that
these were the last to be introduced. The

160 The Italian Waldenses

King arrived, alighted, shook hands with the
deputies; then, perceiving the President of
the Waldensian Committee, passed before
priests and mayors without noticing them, and
marched straight to him with outstretched
hand, exclaiming, 'I am among friends. How
do you do, Mr. Prochet ? ' So the first were
last and the last first. The delight of the
thousands of Waldenses, who saw their pas-
tors so honored by their beloved sovereign,
was unbounded.

"In the following year, 1893, the Synod
being met at Torre Pellice, a deputation was
sent to the King at Pinerolo. He received
them in the most cordial manner, and in answer
to the invitation to visit Torre Pellice, said
that he was not sure that he would have time
for it, but ' some time,' added he, with a
smile, ' I shall come to see you. '

"The Synod closed; the members dispersed
on Friday, and the following day the King,
without warning any one, gave the unex-
pected order to his coachman to drive to Torre
Pellice. Fortunately some one overheard the
order and telegraphed to the Moderator. One
hour elapsed between the departure from
Pinerolo and the arrival at Torre Pellice of
the royal carriage, and in that hour four thou-

Bi-centenary of "Glorious Return" 161

sand people got the news, dressed in haste,
and welcomed the King, who, alighting at the
entrance of the town, walked between the
Moderator and the Mayor, visiting succes-
sively the Casa Valdese, the church, and the
hospital. When the people saw the King
enter the church, which probably no prince
of the house of Savoy had ever done before,
their enthusiasm was indescribable.

"In the Casa Valdese the King read the
inscription on the slab of marble, telling
with grateful words of his gift, and, turning
to the Moderator, said, ' Indeed, I did not
deserve so much.' On leaving the town to
return "o Pinerolo he shook hands once more
with the Moderator, saying, ' I loved your
people before, but now I shall love them still

INDEX

Abraham, 37.

Adelaide, Countess, of Morienne,
126.

Adriatic, the, 9.

Aix, Bishop of, persecutes the
Waldenses, 30.

Albi, the town of, 20.

Albigenses, the, unite with the
Waldenses, 18 ; their name lost,
18 ; persecuted by Pope Innocent
III., 19; their early history, 20 ;
various names of, 20 ; origin of
their name, 20; their numbers,
21 ; form to resist the tyranny
of Rome, 21 ; their writings de-
stroyed, 2i ; accused of Mani-
cheism, 21 ; refuse to repent, 22 ;
martyrdom of, 22 ; the Pauli-
cians develop into, 24 ; pos-
sessed Peter Waldo's translation
of the Scriptures, 39 ; contradic-
tory accounts given of, 44.

Alexander I., Czar of Russia,
gives money to the Waldenses,
144.

Alexandrini, Cardinal, the chief
Inquisitor, 99.

Alpine Church, the, 59, 71.

Alpine valleys, the, 6, 9.

Alps, the, 2 ; guarded by the Wal-
denses against the inroads of
Louis XIV., 4.

Alps of Dauphiny, the, 143.

Alps of France, the, Waldensian

colony in, 63 ; exterminated, 63.
Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, " the

Rock of the Church," 17.
Amedeus IX., Duke of Savoy, 63,

130.
Angrogna, Lord of, 132.
Angrogna, Marquis of, 149.
Angrogna, the mountains of, 66,

75, 104.
Angrogna, the Synod of, 124.
Angrogna, the town of, 51, 79 ; the

Waldenses attacked in, 81, 8y,

121.
Angrogna, the valley of, 49 ; synod

held in, 63; invaded by the

Inquisitors, 63, 74, 134.
Antichrist, the, 34.
Aosta, 125.
Apennines, the, 94.
" Apostolicals," the, see Albi-
genses.
Appie, Pastor, of Angrogna, death

of, 104.
Apuglie, Waldensian colony in,

63 ; exterminated, 63.
Aquitaine, 8 ; the Albigenses in,

20.
Aries, Bishop of, persecutes the

Waldenses, 30.
Armenia, 23, 39.

r64

Index

Arnaud, Col. Henri, the hero of
the Waldensian return from
exile, 9; on the origin of the
Waldenses, 10; leads the Wal-
denses in their glorious return
of 1689, 86, 87 ; plans to de-
liver the Waldenses out of Swit-
zerland, 91, 114, 115, 156.

Asia, 24.

Avignon, Bishop of, persecutes the
Waldenses, 30.

Azeglio, Marquis Robert d', heads
a petition for the emancipation
of the Waldenses, 150.

Bagnolese, the, 53.
Bagnolo, the Waldenses at, 53.
Balsiglia, the mountain of, 157.
Balsille, the town of, 92 ; the siege

of, 93-

"Banished," the, 118.

Barbes, the Waldensian, 5, 40 ;
meaning of the word, 55 ; the
writings of, 56 ; their knowledge
of the Bible, 57; location of
their school, 5 7 ; their support,
57; their duties, 58; their lan-
guage, 58; their annual synod,
59 ; their work, 60 ; generally
unmarried, 61 ; as martyrs, 61,
62.

Barbets, 55.

Barcelona, church of, 8.

Baronius, Cesar, laments the cor-
ruption of the Roman Church,
61 ; submits to the Roman
Church, 62.

Barthelemi, John, 105 ; death of,
105.

Bavaria, the Waldenses at, 54.

Beckwith, General Charles, the
most generous of the benefactors
of the Waldenses, 145 ; his bene-
fits to the Waldensian Church,
145 ; his life among the Wal-
denses, 145 ; at Waterloo, 146 ;

estimate of, 146 ; decorated,
150.

Believers, the, 21.

Bergamo, the Waldenses at, 53.

Bernard, Pastor, of Perosa, death
of, 104.

Bernard, Saint, describes the Wal-
denses, 43.

Bersour, Commissioner, his in-
vasion against the Waldenses,
132.

Bersour, Louis, becomes a Protes-
tant, 132.

Bersour, Paul, 132.

Bert, Pastor, 151.

Bible, the, love of the Waldenses
for, 2; Peter Waldo makes a
translation of, 39; Olivetan
makes a French translation of,

155-

Blanche, widow of the Count of
Luserna, sympathizes with the
Waldenses, 132.

Bobi, the town of, 51 ; the Protes-
tant temple of, 72, 79, 131,
132.

Bohemia, 25.

Bonjour, Minister, 105.

Borgo d' Oltramontani, the town
of, 96.

Botta, the historian, on Peter the
Waldo, 29.

Bouillon, Godfrey of, takes Jeru-
salem from the Saracens, 37.

Boulle, Valentine, 132.

Brescia, the Waldenses at, 53.

Bricherasio, the town of, the Wal-
denses attacked in, 81.

Bruis, Peter de, 29.

Bruneral, Pastor John, of Rora,
death of, 104.

Brunet, Monsieur, 106.

Bulgaria, 24.

Bulgarians, the, 20.

Busca, Waldensian colony at, 53;
destroyed, 53, 123, 124.

Index

165

Calabria, the Waldenses send a
colony to, 53 ; destroyed, 53, 63,
94 ; the beginnings of the colony,
94 ; John Louis Pascal at, 98 ;
the attention of the Roman In-
quisition called to, 99 ; the peo-
ple betrayed and killed, 100; the
colony totally exterminated, 101.

Calvin, John, 29.

Cambridge, 34, 57.

Campanula Elatinus, the blue, 51.

Carlo Emanuel, promises to pro-
tect the Waldenses, 141.

Casa Valdese, the, 161.

Castel Sant' Angelo, the square
of, at Rome, 99.

Castrocaro, Governor, placed over
the Waldenses by Marguerite of
Valois, 135 ; his treachery, 135.

Cathari, the, 20.

Catinat, General, marches against
the Waldenses, 88.

Cattanee, Archdeacon Albert, tries
to convert the Waldenses, 65 ;
sends his army against the Wal-
denses, 65 ; meets with defeat,
66, 67 ; withdraws his army, 68.

Cavour, the rock of, 50, 77, 130.

Celibacy of the clergy, the, treatise
written by Vigilantius Leo on, 8.

Cenis, Mount, 1, 48.

Chalance, the, 50.

Champforans, the Synod of, 61,
70.

Chanforan, Pastor Joseph, death
of, 104.

Charlemagne, 13 ; at the Council
of Frankfort, 16; the twelve
counsellors of, 37.

Charles I. of Piedmont furnishes
troops against the Waldenses,
64 ; withdraws his troops, 69 ;
makes peace with the Wal-
denses, 69.

Charles Albert, King of Sardinia,
gives a charter of liberty to the

Waldenses, 46, 151 ; at La
Torre, 148-150; gratitude of
the Waldenses to, 153.

Charles Emanuel II., Duke of
Savoy, 79.

Christ, the Jews the typical ene-
mies and persecutors of, 37.

Christians, the, persecuted by
the Jews and Saracens, t>7 5 the
Saracens the typical enemies
and persecutors of, yj.

Cisalpine Gaul, Vigilantius retires
from persecution to, 9.

Civita Vecchia, the port of, 142.

Claude, Bishop, enmity of Dungal
to, 12 ; early life of, 13 ; his ap-
pointment as Bishop of Turin,
13; his work in Turin, 14; his
writings, 15 ; his opposition to
the adoration of the cross, 15 ;
seals his faith by martyrdom, 16.
See also Seyssel, Claude.

Clergy, the celibacy of, 8.

Cluson, the valley of, 139.

Coadjuteur, the, 59.

Col du Pis, the, 52.

Constance, the Council of, 78.

Constance, Queen, 22.

Constantine, Emperor, 8.

Constantine Sylvanus, founds the
Paulicians, 23 ; ordered to be
stoned, 23.

Constantinople, 105.

Cosenza, 98.

Cottian Alps, the valleys of, 1 ; the
Waldenses in, 12 ; the ancient
church of, 25 ; principal occu-
pations of the inhabitants of, 45.

Cottius, King, 9.

Council of the barbes, the, 59.

Cowrnaout, the, 50.

Cristina, Maria, persecutes the
Waldenses, 130, 141.

Cromwell, Oliver, sympathy shown
for the Waldenses by, 141 ; in-
tercedes for the Waldenses, 142.

i66

Index

Crusaders, the, 19.
Cuneo, Waldensian colony at, 53 ;
destroyed, 53, 98.

Dauphiny, the French province
of, the Albigenses in, 20. 26,
48 ; the Waldenses attacked in,
68, 70, 105, 121.

" Digiunati," the, 11S.

Dominic, the "blessed," canonized
for his services, 19.

Dominicans, the, 30.

Dungal, his enmity to Bishop
Claudio, 12, 16 ; his references
to Vigilantius, 13.

Emanuel Philibert of Savoy,
supplication of the Waldenses
to, 10 ; grants amnesty to the
Waldenses, 77 ; Marguerite of
Valois the wife of, 133.

England, 87; contributes money
to the Waldenses, 144.

Epistles, the, 57.

Erfurt, 27.

Este, Duchess of, see Renee.

Farel, 70, 121.

Farine, Cristine, becomes a Pro-
testant, 132.

"Fasters," the, 119.

Ferdinand of Aragon, King of
Naples, confirms the charter for
the colony at Calabria, 96.

Fleury, the Abbey of, 15.

Florence, Waldensian churches
at, 1 ; the Waldenses at, 53 ;
theological college at, 102.

Foix, Marguerite de, persecutes
the Waldenses, 131.

Foucald, Bernard de, on the mis-
sionary zeal of the Waldenses,
60.

France, 20, 25.

France, King of, furnishes troops
against the Waldenses, 64.

Francis I., of France, confession
presented by the Waldenses to,
10.

Francis of Assisi, Saint, imposi-
tion of, 38.

Franciscans, the, 30.

Frankfort, the Council of, sus-
tains Bishop Claude in his
opposition to the worship of
images, 16.

French, the, attack the Waldenses,
88.

French Alps, the, 2,7, i44«

French valleys, the, 52.

French Vaudois, the, 140.

G abr 1 el of Savoy, marches against

the Waldenses, 88.
Gascony, the Albigenses in, 20.
Gay, Pastor Barnabas, death of,

104.
Gay, Pastor James, death of, 104.
Geneva, 3 ; the library of, 57, 102,

105, 120, 141.
Genoa, Waldensian churches at,

1 ; the Waldenses in, 54.
Germanasca, the river, 49, 51.
German Reformation, the, 2, 54,

61 ; revives the faith of the

Waldenses, 70.
German Reformer, the, 10 ; their

friendship for the Waldenses,

54.

Germany, 25, 87.

Geymonat, Dr. Paolo, decorated
by King Humbert, 159.

Gilles, Pierre, the historian of the
Waldenses, 56 ; on the writings
of the barbes, 55 ; on the confi-
dence reposed in the barbes, jt, ;
warns the colonists at Calabria
to prepare for persecution, 98 ;
at Luserna, 105 ; his burdens,
106 ; his " History of the Wal-
denses," 108, 109; escape of,
122; on the touching appeal of

Index

167

the Alpine pastors to Marguerite
of Valois, 133 ; on the fidelity of
Octavia Sollaro, 138.

Gilles, Samuel, 105.

Gilly, Rev. Dr., of England, in-
fluence of his writings for the
benefit of the Waldenses, 145.

Girardet, Catelan, of San Gio-
vanni, i2i ; martyrdom of, 121.

" Glorious Return of 1689," the,
86; signalizes the end of the
bloody persecution of the Wal-
denses, 143 ; the Bi-centenary
of, 1 56-161.

Gnostic theology, 23.

" Good Men," the, see Albigcnses.

Gregory IX., Pope, 19.

Grenoble, 121.

Grisons, the, 90.

Gros, Pastor Augustus, 117, 118.

Gros, Pastor Joseph, of Saint John,
death of, 104.

Gros, Valere, 105, 106.

Gonin, Martin, of Angrogna, ar-
rested as a spy, 121 ; ordered to
be liberated, 121 ; arrested on
the charge of heresy, 121 ; mar-
tyrdom of, 121.

Guarini, Camilla, affianced to John
Louis Pascal, 98 ; Pascal's let-
ters to, 98 ; her heart broken by
Pascal's martyrdom, 135.

Henricians, the, 20.

Henry II., of France, 133.

Henry, the Italian, 29.

Holland, Sy ; contributes money
to the Waldenses, 144.

Holy See, the, 64.

Huguenots, the, 156.

Humbert, King, 4 ; the Waldenses
express their devotion to, 157;
his friendship for the Waldenses,
159; his two visits to the Wal-
densian valleys, 1 59-161.

" Humiliated," the, 30, 38.

Innocent III., Pope, persecutes
the Albigenses, 19; condemns
triclavianism, 38.

Innocent VIII., Pope, issues a
bull of extermination against the
Waldenses, 64, 123.

Innocent XII., Pope, makes a fiery
protest against the Waldenses,
158.

Inquisition, the, 35.

Inquisitors, the, 19 ; their oppres-
sion of the Waldenses, 41 ; ex-
terminate the Waldensian colony
in Provence, 53 ; invade the
valley of Angrogna, 63.

Iser, the river, 121.

Italian Alps, the, 144.

Italian language, the, 57.

Italy, 4.

Jacob, the pastor, martyrdom of
126.

Jahier, Captain, in ; attacks the
town of San Secondo, 113;
death of, 113.

Jajuet, Bernardin, pastor of San
Martino, death of, 104.

Janavel, Joshua, the hero, 83, 86 ;
plans to lead the Waldenses out
of Switzerland, 91, 114; heroic
acts of, in ; unites with Captain
Jahier, 112 ; attacks the town of
San Secondo, 113; wounded,
113; in exile, 114.

Janavel, Margaret, death of, 139.

Javel, Pastor David, death of,
104.

Jerome, charges brought by Vi-
gilantius Leo against, 8 ; his
violent answer, 9.

Jerusalem, S ; taken from the Sar-
acens by Godfrey de Bouillon,

37-
Jesuitism, y8.
Jesuits, the, 84.

i68

Index

Jews, the, persecute the Christians,
27; the typical enemies and per-
secutors of Christ, 27'

John, Saint, the prophecies of, 33,

57-

Joli, Pastor Laurens, death of,
104.

Jonas of Orleans, on Bishop
Claude's opposition to the adora-
tion of the cross, 15.

Julius II., Pope, 131.

" La Barca," a Waldensian poem,

36.

La Chapelle, the town of, 52.

La Guardia, the town of, 97 ; the
Waldenses massacred at, 100.

Languedoc, the Albigenses in, 20.

Lantaret, Dr., 159.

Latin language, the, 57.

La Torre, 104 ; invaded by the
pestilence, 107, 108 ; hospital at,
145 ; Trinity College established
at, 145 ; Charles Albert at, 14S-
150; rejoicing over the emanci-
pation of the Waldenses at,
152.

La Tour, the capital of Luserna,

51-

Lausanne, 122, 125.

Lazarus, Saint, 148.

Leger, Pastor Anthony, on the
Waldenses, 44, 57; on the mas-
sacre of the Waldenses in 1655,
83 ; recalled from Constanti-
nople, 105 ; on Jahier's zeal,
114, 142.

Leman, Lake, 54, 92, 114, 156,

157.

Leo, the reputed founder of the
Waldenses, 7 ; discredited by the
Waldenses, 8. See also Vigi-
lantius Leo.

" Leonists," the, 7 ; the " most
pernicious sect of ancient here-
tics," 7. See also Waldenses.

Leonora, wife of Valentine Boulle,
132.

Le Puglie, the town of, 97.

Lombardy, the plain of, 53.

Louis XL, of France, 130.

Louis XII. , of France, tribute to
the Vaudois of, 44.

Louis XIV., of France, urges Vic-
tor Amedeus to persecute the
Waldenses, 3 ; the Waldenses
guard the Alps against the in-
roads, of, 4 ; becomes the cham-
pion of the Papacy, 86 ; revokes
the Edict of Nantes, 86; thinks
the Waldenses are exterminated,
89 ; Cromwell remonstrates with,
142.

Louis the Meek, 13.

Louis the Pious, 13.

Low Countries, the, 106; contri-
bute money to the Waldenses,
145.

Lucifer, 21 ; the Waldenses ac-
cused of worshipping, 40.

Lucius II., Pope, condemns the
Waldenses, 60.

Luserna, Count of, 132.

Luserna, the Countesses of, use
their influence to protect the
Waldenses, 133.

Luserna, Marquis of, 149.

Luserna, the valley of, 49, 50; the
towns of, 51 ; the Waldenses in,
54; the barbes of, 71 ; the Wal-
denses massacred in, 84 ; the
pest in, 103, 117, 121, 122, 128,

i3°> I31. *34-

Luther, Martin, the sudden relig-
ious impression received by, 27.

Lyons, the Archbishop of, perse-
cutes Peter the Waldo, 29.

Lyons, 8, 25.

Magdeburg, 90.

Magi, the, at the cradle of the

Saviour, t,7-

Index

169

Manicheans, the, 20.

Manicheism, the Albigenses ac-
cused of, 21 ; definition of, 21.

Man of Sin, the, 34.

Mantua, the Waldenses at, 53.

Margaret, Duchess of Savoy, gains
clemency for the Waldenses, yy.

Margaret of Navarre, 133.

Margaret, Queen, 4.

Marguerite of Valois, her friend-
ship for the Waldenses, 133 ;
touching appeal of the Alpine
pastors to, 133 ; Pastor Noel
sent to obtain the intercession
of, 134 ; deceived by Governor
Castrocaro, 135.

Mariolatry, the doctrines of, 35.

Marseilles, the galleys at, 88.

Martel, Charles, conquers the
Saracens, 37.

Martin, Henri, on the Waldenses,

45-
Mathias, the valley of, 52.
Mathurin, Jeanne, of Carignano,

martyrdom of, 136, 137.
Maurice, Saint, 148.
Mazarin, 131.
Meane, the valley of, 52.
Meille, Pastor Joshua, 152, 153.
Messina, Waldensian churches

at, 1.
Michelin of Bobi, 84.
Milan, Waldensian churches at,

1, 123.
Milton, John, 142.
Minerva, the convent of, 99.
Minor friars, the, 30.
Mission churches, Waldensian,

money needed for, 5.
Monasticism, sanctity of, 8.
Mondovi, Noir de, leads the troops

against the Waldenses, 66 ; his

death, 67.
Monks, the, 55.
Montalto, 100.
Montfort, Simon de, 19.

Moravians, the, 156.

Morienne, 126.

Morland, Sir Samuel, 34 ; his in-
dignation at the persecution of
the Waldenses, 142.

Moslem, invasion, the, 16.

Mountaineers, the, 53.

Muston, Alexis, on the Waldenses,
45 ; on the Vatican, 47 ; Rome
the cause of the Waldensian
persecution, 79; on the change
in the Waldensian language,
109.

Nantes, the Edict of, revoked by
Louis XIV., 86.

Naples, Waldensian churches at,
1, 101, 123.

Naples, King of, see Ferdinand of
Aragon.

Naples, Prince of, 4.

Napoleon I., 93.

Neff, Felix, dedicates himself to
evangelization, 143 ; spiritual
character of, 144.

Negrin, Stephen, the martyrdom
of, 99.

" Noble Lesson," the, 6 ; the most
ancient document of the Wal-
denses, 32 ; the spirit of, 32 ;
the subject of, 32 ; doubt thrown
on the antiquity of, 34 ; attri-
buted to Peter Waldo, 34 ;
proof of the antiquity of, 36,
38 ; on the contradictory ac-
counts given of the Vaudois, 44.

Noel, Pastor, escape of, 122 ; sent
to obtain the intercession of
Marguerite of Valois, 134.

Novara, the defeat of, 157.

Nyon, 157.

Olivetan, translates the Bible

into French, 155.
Order of Saint Francis of Assisi,

the, 83.

170

Index

Order of Saints Maurice and

Lazarus, the, 148, 159.
Origen, the opinions of, 8.
Orleans, 15, 33.

Palatinate, the, 90.

Palermo, Waldensian churches
at, 1.

Papacy, the, believed by the
Waldenses to be the predicted
Anti-Christ, 33; Louis XIV.
becomes the champion of, 86.

Papists, the, destroy Waldensian
literature, 57 ; massacre the
Waldenses at Torre Pellice, 80.

Paris, 124.

Paris, the Council of, sustains
Bishop Claude in his opposi-
tion to the worship of images, 16.

Pascal, John Louis, burned at
Rome, 53, 61 ; sent to Calabria,
98 ; affianced to Camilla Gua-
rini, 98; his letters to her, 98;
his zeal and courage, 99 ; his
imprisonment, 99; his martyr-
dom, 99, 136.

Pastors, the Waldensian, 5.

Paterines, the, 20.

Paulicians, the, 20; converts from
Manicheism, 23 ; founded by
Constantine Sylvanus, 23 ; the
principles of, 23 ; emigration of,
24 ; develop into the Albi-
genses, 24; possessed Peter
Waldo's translation of the Scrip-
tures, 39.

Pellice, the river, 49, 51.

" Perfect," the, 31, 38.

Perosa, the valley of, 49, 50, 51 ;
the towns of, 52 ; the Walden-
ses in, 54 ; the pest in, 103, 105,
116, 126, 134.

Pest of 1630, the, 102-110.

Peter, Saint, the prophecies of, 33 ;
Pope Innocent VIII. the pre-
tended successor of, 64.

Peter the Waldo, of Lyons, 8 ; the
founder of the ancient church of
the Cottian Alps, 25 ; death of,
25 ; never recognized by the
Waldenses as their head, 25 ; his
various names, 26 ; his birth, 26 ;
early education of, 26; crisis in
the life of, 26; denounces the
Roman Church, 27; devotes
himself to missionary labors, 27 ;
gives his property to the poor,
28 ; his separation from his
family, 28 ; persecuted by the
Archbishop of Lyons, 29 ; flees
into Picardy, 29 ; his preaching,
30 ; his converts, 30 ; the " Noble
Lesson " attributed to, 34 ;
makes a translation of the
Scriptures, 39.

Petrobrusians, the, 20.

Pianezza, Marquis of, a conspic-
uous persecutor of the Walden-
ses, 78 ; characteristics of, 78 ;
his perfidious attack on the Wal-
denses, 80; defeats the Wal-
denses by treachery, 81-84.

Pian Pra, the, 112.

Picardy, 29.

Piedmont, 7; Peter the Waldo in,
29, 47 ; invaded by a French
army, 103 ; martyrdom in,
120.

Piedmont, the plain of, 48, 49,

53> 63, 94, 127-

Piedmontese, the, attack the Wal-
denses, 88.

Piedmontese Alps, the, 135, 143.

Piedmontese Waldensian valleys,
the, 54 ; glorious return of the
Waldenses to, 86.

Pinerolo, 65, 69, 130, 150; re-
joicing over the emancipation of
the Waldenses at, 152, 160.

Pinerolo, the Abbey of, 126.

Planghere, Saguet de, 68.

Po, the valley of the, 116.

Index

171

Pons, Signor, the Waldensian
pastor, 1 01.

Poor Men of Lyons, the, disciples
of Peter the Waldo, 29 ; perse-
cuted by the Archbishop of
Lyons, 29 ; later persecution of,

3°. 38-

Porta Pia, breach of, at Rome, 157.

Pra del Tor, the school of the
barbes at, 57, 59 ; the Count of
Trinity tries to surprise, 75 ; the
Waldensian victory, 75.

Pragela, the barbes of, 71.

Pramol, the town of, 104.

Prangins, 114; monument dedi-
cated to the Waldensian heroes
at, 156.

Preaching friars, the, 30.

Prins, David, 85.

Prins, James, 85.

Prochet, Dr. Matteo, 159, 160.

Propaganda, the Congregation of,
motto of, 78.

Propaganda Fede, the College of
the, established to persecute the
Waldenses, 54.

Provence, the Albigenses in, 20 ;
the Waldenses send a colony of
farmers into, 52 ; exterminated
by the Inquisitors, 53, 63, 97 ;
persecution in, 124.

Prussia, contributes money to the
Waldenses, 144.

Prussia, the Ambassador of, col-
lects money for the Waldenses,
144.

Publicans, the, 20.

Puglie, the Waldenses send a col-
ony to, 53; destroyed, 53.

Pyrenees, the, 8.

Queyras, the valley of, 52.

Racconis, Count of, 126.
Raynouard, Mr., on the " Noble
Lesson," 35.

Reformation, the, 2, 54.

Regidor, the, 59.

Reinerius, the Inquisitor, 31.

Renee, Duchess of Este, 133.

Revel, Pierre, of Angrogna, 67.

Rheims, 15.

Richelieu, Cardinal, 103.

Roman Church, the, its antagon-
ism to the Waldenses, 1 ; the
immoderate endowment of, 8 ;
the idolatry and corruption of,
18 ; the Albigenses form to
resist the tyranny of, 21 ; Peter
Waldo denounces, 27 ; Cesar
Baronius laments the corruption
of, 61 ; he submits to, 62 ; Yo-
lande orders the Waldenses to
return to, 63.

Roman Inquisition, the, 99.

Romaunt languages, the ancient,

32> 34, 57-
Rome, Waldensian churches at, 1,

5, 6 ; the seven hills of, 34 ; to

blame for the Waldensian per-
secution, 79, 98.
Rora, the town of, 51 ; burned by

the Count of Trinity, 76, 79 ;

heroically defended by Janavel,

in, 131.
Rora, the valley of, 49, 116.
Rorenco, prior of St. Rock, on

the antiquity of the Waldenses,

12.
Rospart, the river, 51.
Royale, Madame, see Cristina,

Maria.
Rozel, Daniel, of Bobi, 105.
Russia, Czar of, see Alexander I.

Sacco, Reinerius, an Inquisitor,

on the " Leonists," 7.
Sadoleto, Cardinal, becomes a

friend of the Waldenses, 140 ;

his sudden death, 140.
Saint Germain, the town of, raids

on, 126, 127.

172

Index

Saint John, the heights of, 66 ; the
Waldenses attacked on, 81, 117.

Saint Martin, 105.

Saint Remi, the library of, 15.

Saint Rock, 12.

Saluzzo, Marquis of, 131.

Saluzzo, Marchioness of, 131.

Saluzzo, Waldensian colony at,
51 ; destroyed, 53 ; the inhabit-
ants take possession of their
homes, 116.

Saluzzo, the marquisate of, 128.

San Giovanni, the heights of, 66 ;
Varaglia at, 124 ; rejoicing over
the emancipation of the Wal-
denses at, 152.

San Martino, the valley of, 49, 50,
51 ; the towns of, 52 ; the Wal-
denses in, 54; the Waldenses
attacked in, 68 ; their victory,
69 ; the pest in, 103, 134.

San Secondo, the town of, attacked
by Janavel and Jahier, 113.

San Sisto, the town of, 96 ; the
Waldenses massacred at, 100.

San Vincenzo, the town of, 96.

Saracens, the, persecute the Chris-
tians, 37 ; conquered by Charles
Martel, 37; Godfrey de Bouil-
lon, takes Jerusalem from, 37;
the typical enemies and perse-
cutors of Christians, 37.

Sardinia, King of, see Charles
Albert.

Sartoris, Nicholas, martyrdom of,
125.

Saviour, the, three Magi at the
cradle of, 37.

Savoy, 115.

Savoy, Dukes and Duchesses of,
bigotry of, 3 ; reluctant to perse-
cute the Waldenses, 140.

Savoy, the mountains of, 54, 92.

Saxony, the Elector of, 142.

Scriptures, the, Peter Waldo
makes a translation of, 39.

Seyssel, Claude, Archbishop of
Turin on the origin of the
Waldenses, 7. See also Claudio,
Bishop.

Sibaud, oath taken by the Wal-
densians at, 5 ; reunion of the
Waldenses at, 158.

Sicily, 1.

Simeon, converted, 23 ; becomes
Constantine's successor, 24 ;
burned, 24.

Sollaro, Octavia, marriage of, 137 ;
her fidelity to her faith, 137 ;
death of, 138.

Sollaro, Villanora, the noble family
of, 128, 137.

" Song of Roland," the old Pro-
vencal, 36.

Spain, 8.

Spinello, Marquis of, 94 ; founds
the colony at Calabria, 94, 96.

Spoleto, the Waldenses at, 53.

Stephen, 22.

Stewart, Rev. Robert, of Scotland,
aid given the Waldensian mis-
sions by, 147 ; mural tablet in
honor of, 147.

Stoicism, 123.

Subiasc, the river, 51.

Sweden, 156.

Swiss, the, 89.

Swiss pastors, the, 102, 120.

Switzerland, the Waldenses driven
into, 4, 89 ; the Waldenses in,
54 ; the Waldenses escape from,
86 ; promises to detain the Wal-
denses, 90 ; sympathy shown
the Waldenses by the people of,
141 ; contributes money to the
Waldenses, 144.

Sylvester, Pope, 7 ; avarice of, 8.

Synod of the barbes, the, 59.

Taillaret, the town of, burned

by Pianezza, 82.
Tavola, the, 149.

Index

*73

Thirteen Lakes, the, plain of,

50-
Th race, 24.

Tiber, the river, 99.

Torre di Nona, the dungeon of, at
Rome, 99.

Torre Pellice, 73 ; Pianezza's per-
fidious attack on, 80; the synod
held at, 156, 160.

Toulouse, 20.

Turin, Waldensian churches at,
1 ; "wholly given to idolatry,"
14, 48 ; Geoffroy Varaglia burned
at, 61, 82, 84, 87, 88, 89, 116,
124, 151 ; rejoicing over the
emancipation of the Waldenses
at, 153.

Turin, Archbishop of, see Seyssel,
Clatide, 7.

Turin, the Council of, urges Charles
Emanuel II. against the Wal-
denses, 79 ; its decree against the
Waldenses, 79 ; the Waldenses
appeal to, 79.

Turin, the Senate of, 128 ; pro-
hibits the publication of Pope
Innocent XII's. bull against the
Waldenses, 158.

Turinese, the, 153.

Turrel, General, death of, 115.

Triclavianism condemned by Pope
Innocent III., 38.

Trinity College, established at La
Torre, 145.

Trinity, Count of, attempts to de-
feat the Waldenses by treachery,
74 ; foiled, 74 ; tries to surprise
l'ra del Tor, 75 ; his defeat, 75 ;
burns the town of Rora, 76 ; his
army recalled, 77.

Trent, the Council of, recommen-
dation of, 78.

Ultramontanes, the, 60.
United States, the, contributes
money to the Waldenses, 145.

Uscegli, Mark, the martyrdom,
99.

Val Clusone, 52; synod at, 61,
102.

Valden, 26.

Valdenses of Piedmont, see
Waldenses*

Valdensis, 26.

Valdensius, 26.

Val de Pragela, 52, 102.

Valdis, 26.

Valdius, 26.

Valdo, 26.

Vallenses, the, 53.

Val Louise, 44, 52, 68, 102.

Val Pellice, the valley of, 49.

Val Perosa, 52.

Val San Martino, hospital founded
in, 145 ; sham fight at, 159.

Varaglia, Geoffroy, burned at
Turin, 61 ; story of, 123, 125.

Vatican, the, 47.

Vaudois, the, evil meaning at-
tached to the word, 41 ; con-
tradictory accounts given of, 44 ;
tribute of Louis XII. to, 44.
See also Waldenses.

Vaudra, 26.

Vaulderie, evil meaning attached
to the word, 41.

Venice, Waldensian churches at,
1 ; the Waldenses in, 54.

Vicenza, the Waldenses at, 53.

Victor Amedeus II., Duke of
Savoy, the prince of the Wal-
denses, 3 ; drives the Waldenses
into Switzerland, 4 ; loyalty of
the Waldenses to, 4 ; orders the
Waldenses to cease the exercise
of their religion, 87 ; joins the
league of William of Orange,
93 ; promises made to the Wal-
denses by, 141 .

Victor Emanuel Ferdinand, Prince
of Naples, 4.

174

Index

Vigilantius Leo, the Leonist of

Lyons, 8 ; work of, 8 ; his

charges against Jerome, 8 ;

Jerome's violent answer to, 9;

retires to Cisalpine Gaul for

safety from persecution, 9 ;

references of Dun gal to, 13.
Vignaux, Pastor John of Villar,

death of, 104.
Villafranca, 84, 117.
Villar, the town of, 51, 73, 76, 79,

141.
Violante, see Yolande.
Viso, Mount, 1, 48 ; the " Jungfrau

of the South," 49.
Vittoria, Waldensian churches

at, 1.

Waldenses, the Italian, location
of, 1 ; their growth, 1 ; their
churches, 1 ; persecution of, 2 ;
refuse to recognize the Roman
pontiff, 2 ; their love of the
Bible, 2 ; never failed in patri-
otic love and service to their
country, 3 ; driven into Switzer-
land by Victor Amedeus II., 4 ;
guard the Alps against the in-
roads of Louis XIV., 4 ; the
pariahs and outcasts of Italy, 4;
restrictions of, 4; their lack of
bitterness and revenge, 4; their
fidelity to their oath, 5 ; their
" barbes," 5 ; their mission
churches, 5 ; their origin and
traditions, 6; evidences of their
early Christian origin, 6-9;
meaning of the name, 8 ; con-
fession presented to Francis I.
by, 10; their supplication to
Emanuel Philibert of Savoy, 10;
refuse to be called a Reformed
Church, 11; in the Cottian
Alps, 12 ; Bishop Claude, 12-
16; without a bishop, 16; ex-
tent of the influence of their

church, 17; joined by the Al-
bigenses, 18 ; never recognized
Peter Waldo as their head, 25 ;
the historian Botta on the name
of, 29 ; marvellous growth of, 30 ;
the "Noble Lesson" of, 32^
believe the Papacy to be the
predicted Antichrist, 33 ; a per-
secuted and suffering race, 40;
accusations against, 40 ; op-
pressed by the Inquisitors, 41 ;
the lovely modesty and humility
of, 42 ; their converts, 43 ; de-
scribed by Saint Bernard, 43 ;
their contempt of death and suf-
fering, 44 ; Leger on, 44 ; their
principal occupations, 45 ; their
type, 45 ; Muston and Henri
Martin on, 45 ; Charles Albert,
King of Sardinia, gives a charter
of liberty to, 46 ; prohibitions
of, 46; their location, 48, 49;
send a colony of farmers into
Provence, 52 ; send colonies to
Calabria and the Puglie, 53 ; the
missions of, 53 ; their friendship
for the German reformers, 54 ;
the College of the Propaganda
Fede established to persecute,
54; their barbes, 55-62; their
missionary zeal the cause of
their persecution, 60; their
thirty-three persecutions, 63 ;
ordered by Yolande to return to
the Roman Church, 63 ; Pope
Innocent VIII. issues a bull
of extermination against, 64 ;
troops sent against, 64 ; their
touching appeal, 65 ; their won-
derful victories, 66-69; peace
made by, 69 ; the German Refor-
mation revives the faith of, 70 ;
ordered to attend mass, 71 ;
their response in arms, 72 ; at-
tacked by the garrison of Villar,
73; their victory, 73; the Count

Index

75

of Trinity fails in his treachery
against, 74 ; their success against
their enemies, 76 ; Emanuel
Philibert grants amnesty to,
yy ; Margaret, Duchess of Savoy,
gains clemency for, yy ; the
Marquis of Pianezza, a con-
spicuous persecutor of, 78 ; the
Council of Turin urges Charles
Emanuel II. against, 79; the
decree against, 79 ; their appeal
to the Council of Turin, 79 ;
Pianezza's perfidious attack on
Torre Pellice, 80 ; their escape
to the heights, 80 ; attacked
on all sides, 81 ; their successful
defence, 81 ; deceived by Pia-
nezza's treachery, 82-84 > tneu"
glorious return in 1689, 86 ;
escape from Switzerland, 86;
ordered by Victor Amedeus II.
to cease the exercise of their
religion, $y ; attacked by the
French and the Piedmontese, 88 ',
the exile into Switzerland, 89;
their return from Switzerland,
91-93 ; their colony at Calabria
exterminated, 100 ; their lan-
guage violently changed, 102 ;
the pest of 1630, 102 ; Italian
in sentiment, no; martyrs of,
120-129; persecuted by women,
130, 131; Bersour's invasion
upon, 132; friendship of Mar-
guerite of Valois for, 133; their
touching appeal to, 133; Mar-
guerite of Valois places Gov-
ernor Castrocaro over, 135 ; the
martyrdom of their women,
I3°-I39 5 their friends, 140-147;
Yolande's persecution of, 141 ;
Madame Royale's persecution
of, 141 ; Carlo Emanuel prom-
ises to protect, 141 ; value of
Dr. Gilly's writings to, 145 ; Gen.

Beckwith's devotion to, 145, 146;
assistance given by Rev. Robert
Stewart to, 147 ; the darkness of
centuries gradually disappearing,
150 ; efforts made for the eman-
cipation of, 150; constitutional
charter of liberty granted to, 1 5 1 ;
rejoicing over the emancipation
of, 151-155; the Bi-centenary
of their "glorious return," 156-
161 ; monument dedicated at
Prangins to the heroes of, 156;
their reunion at Sibaud, 158 ;
resolute resistance to the papal
power over, 158 ; friendship of
King Humbert for, 159.

Waldensian Church, the, extent of
its influence, 1 7 ; ancient em-
blem of, 17; Peter Waldo the
founder of, 25 ; the Apostolic
origin of, 25 ; the Italian origin
of, 25.

Waldensian House and College,
the, 159.

Waldensian literature destroyed by
the Papists, 57.

Waldensian manuscripts, 34.

Waldensian valleys of Italy, the,
26, 37 ; location of, 48.

Waldo, Peter, see Peter the
Waldo.

William of Orange aids Arnaud
for the Waldenses, 91 ; Victor
Amedeus II. joins the league

of, 93-

Women courageously share in the
Waldensian persecutions, 130;
their martyrdom in the Pied-
montese Alps, 135-139"

Wurtemberg, 90.

Yolande orders the Waldenses
to return to the Roman Church,
63 ; her persecution of the Wal-
denses, 130, 141.

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A short history of the Italian Waldenses

Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library

1 1012 00068 4862